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24 mounds that cover the long-forgotten dead. By calculation, upon a basis of counting, it is estimated that one of these burial grounds in the vicinity of Seoul has no fewer than 750,000 of these graves. It is neither reverence nor any other worthy feeling, however, which is the chief factor in fostering a custom so expensive of comfort to the living; it is superstitious fear, akin to that spirit-worship, which is largely devil-worship, and which is really the only effective religion of the non-Christian Korean people. Foreign residents upon the hillsides find it difficult to keep their Korean servants during the night, so dominated are they by their fear. In this respect, as well as others, there is an important difference between so-called ancestor-worship, as in Korea, and ancestor-worship in Japan.

The most obvious thing of interest in Seoul is the city wall. Its construction was begun early in 1396, four years after the present dynasty came to the throne; it was finished in about nine months by the forced labor of men aggregating in number 198,000. According to the legendary account, the course of the wall was marked out by a Buddhist monk, who had the help of a miraculous fall of snow that indicated the line which should be taken in order to avoid a dangerous mixture of the "tiger" influence and the "dragon" influence. To this day the Koreans, like the Chinese, whose pernicious domination they have followed in this as in many other respects, are firm believers in geomancy. The fact is, however, that the wall surrounding Seoul wanders, without any assignable reason, some twelve miles, as recent surveys have settled the long dispute about its length, over hills and along valleys, enclosing a vast amount of uninhabitable as well as inhabited space. It is built of partially dressed stone, with large blocks laid lengthwise at the base, and the superstructure formed of layers of smaller stone—the whole surmounted by battlements about five feet high and pierced with loop-holes for archery