Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/319

 AMEBICAN EXPEDITION. 295 In May, 187l> an Americaii squadron, under Admiral Bodgers, occupied the same anchorage as Admiral Boze in 1866. He tookthe fort of Oanghwa^ but did not enter the city ; and had ultimately to retire like the FrencL The Datong gang river is outside the east gate of the large and hill-defended city of Pingyang. A native scholar of Corea in my service was there in 1876, and saw a laige foreign ship lying on the bank of the river, 100 li from the sea, just outside the east gate. This man's story is, that the vessel went up thither with a flood tide about ten years ago ; and as there had been no rain for long, the ebb tide stranded her : the Coreans manned innumerable boats, set fire to the ship, and killed every soul on board who was not drowned. The Coreans have often put to death every soul on board China junks which sought their shores to do business, but we have never heard of their putting the shipwrecked to deatL They dearly love their isolation; though we trust that this barrier to their own advantage will soon be broken through. The Coreans heard of the French expedition against them with the greatest terror. They gave themselves up for lost Their subsequent joy was proportionately great For they attributed the withdrawal of that and the later American navy not to the low tides in their river, which rendered useless the larger vessels of the expedition, but to their own hitherto undeveloped bravery. In the east they were considered and considered themselves as the poorest of soldiers ; but after the Americans retired, they carried their heads as high as the donkey who pursued the fleeing lion, whom he believed he had frightened. When the writer was explaining the powers and speed of the railway to a friendly Corean magistrate, how it climbed mountains and bored through hills, he, thinking it was something carried about by an army, said, with an angry toss of the head and snap of the fingers : " What care we for your foreign inventions ! Even our boys laugh at all your weapons." Clearly the effect of the two naval expeditions has not been very satisfactory. The third attempt will be necessarily more