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Rh their own miscalculations. If one may judge, from the brief narratives which these discoverers have left behind them, the result of their work upon these inhospitable shores surpassed anything that they had foreseen. The visit of these hardy spirits aroused the curiosity of the Koreans, giving to them their first knowledge of that outer world which they had spurned for centuries. Despite the golden opportunities now presented to them, however, they continued to neglect it. The memory of the black ships and the red beards (Dutchmen)—as they dubbed the strange craft and stranger devils, that had to appear only off their shores to be shipwrecked—dwelt long in their minds. Although they treated these strangers with comparative generosity, they were careful to preserve inviolate the secrets and sanctity of their land. They rejected with contumacy the friendly overtures of strangers who came in monster ships, and who, forsooth, left behind nothing but a name. It is scarcely astonishing, therefore, that there are many points upon the coast of Korea which bear somewhat uncomplimentary names. Deception Bay, Insult Island, and False River savour of certain physical discomforts, which, too great to be borne in silence, left an indelible impression upon the associations of the spot.

If the Dutch sailors of 1627 were among the earliest to reach the forbidding shores of this kingdom, the activities of British voyagers were most prominent in the succeeding century. The work of Captain W. R. Broughton, of the British sloop-o'-war, of sixteen guns, Providence, is described to this day by the bays and harbours into which he penetrated, and the capes and straits which this gallant man christened, to the credit of the distant island kingdom from which he hailed. Broughton in 1797, Maxwell of the