Page:Korea (1904).djvu/56

4 shoals of whales are to be seen, blowing columns of spray aloft, or sleeping idly upon the surface.

The coast of Korea is well sprinkled with the names of foreign navigators, who, in previous centuries, essayed to visit the Land of the Morning Radiance. With rare exceptions, these visitors were turned back. Some were captured and tortured; many were ordered off at once, few were ever entertained. None were invited to make any stay in the new land, or permitted to inspect its wonders and curiosities. Beyond the Japanese, those who succeeded in sapping the wall of isolation which was so carefully built around the country and so rigorously maintained, were generally escorted inland as prisoners, the unconscious victims of some successful stratagem. In a manner, the fashion of their treatment is revealed in the curious names with which these pioneers of navigation have labelled the capes and promontories, the islands and shoals, which they were lucky enough to locate and whose dangers they were fortunate enough to avoid. Many of these names have ceased to be recognised. The lapse of time has caused them to be obliterated by European hydrographers from the maps and charts of the country and seas, in which their originators had risked so much. In many parts of the coast, however, particularly upon the west, along the shores of the Chyung-chyöng Province, these original names have been preserved. They form, to-day, a tribute to the earnestness and intrepidity of these early explorers. This mead of recognition is only just, and is not to be denied to their undoubted gallantry and enterprise.

It is not impossible to believe that an unusually fickle fate followed in their footsteps, prompting them to leave thus for the guidance of future generations, some hint of