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282 more correctly to the sea. Above Chemulpo, where the full force of the Han current is hardly felt, the velocity of the stream is quite five knots an hour. Where the breadth of the river narrows the rapidity of the flow

ON THE HAN RIVER

increases. At a point, where the river makes a sudden sweep round some overhanging bluffs, which confront each other from opposite banks, the heavy volume of water thus tumbling down becomes a swirling, boisterous mill-race, as it twists and foams through its tortuous channels into another tide-swollen reach. The place of meeting between the sea and the river current shows itself in a line of choppy water, neither rough nor smooth, The water is always bubbling and always breaking at this point, in a manner poetically suggestive of the spirits of the restless deep. The Han river gives access to Seoul. In the days before the railway, the choice of route to the capital lay between