Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/294

 270 COBEA. whether from the severity of their chastisement or their experience of the poverty of the land, they did not pay a second visit to Liaotung. They were, however, the scourge of the whole coast of China, from Canton to Chifoo, all through the Ming dynasty ; and held Formosa as piratical headquarters for many years. In the latter half of the Ming period, Liaotung was the scene of frequent fighting. The Tooman, a Mongol people, from the north-west of Liaotimg, took the city of Fooshwun, and attacked Funghwangchung, when the founder of the Manchu. dynasty was a boy of about a dozen years of age, enjoying the quiet mountain life, $ind delighting to join in the sport of the chase some few score miles east of Fooshwun. At Funghwang, Lieutenant-General Heichwun fought the Tooman for three days and nights, and at last fell in the battle. . At the recommendation of the able Li Chungliang, commandant of Liaotung, of the six ^' poo " or fortified small towns east of Liaoyang, that of Gooshan was moved to Changchihala dien, Jienshan to Kwandien and Jiang ; Jao, Sin, and Ngan to the neighbourhood of Changdien and Changling, to look after the borders and the agricultural interests of the neighbourhood. But though all the six were in narrow vallies, east and south- east of the more recent Hingking, that of Kwandien alone seemed to me to be of any strategical importance ; for it is on one of the two routes into Corea> in the midst of a splendid valley covered with immense blocks of lava, of which six feet of the city walls were built ; and flanked by magnificent mountains, before which the other mountains all around seem hillocks. Thirty years after, those fortified cities were abandoned as useless ; indeed, personal inspection has shown the writer only four to have been finished,— the north wall of Kwandien being only half finished ; and of the sixth, never a stone was laid. There were then 64,000 families in those glens, which have for three centuries, under the name of " Neutral Territory,'' been the homes of the deer and the tiger, the leopard, the wild boar, and the wolf, and the stUl more destructive robber bands — only throe years ago annihilated.