Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/242

230 view from any prominent height is always the same; the eye ranges over an expanse of hill-tops, now running in a succession of long, billowy lines, now broken up like the wavelets in a choppy sea, often green with forest, but just as often bare and. forbidding. Clear mountain brooks or shallow streams rushing over beds of gravel are never wanting in the valleys below, where a rude long bridge, or curling smoke, or the presence of cultivation, leads you to observe the brown thatch of some huts clustered under the lee of a hill." On the fifth day Mr. Campbell "branched into untrodden country for the purpose of visiting a remarkable range called the Keum Kang San, or Diamond Mountain, where the most notable collection of Buddhist monasteries in Korea is to be found. There was a considerable change in the configuration of the land as we passed eastward from Keum-Seng. The valleys contracted into narrow, rocky glens, forests of oak, pine, maple, and chestnut clothed the steeper and loftier slopes, and cover sufficiently thick to delight the heart of the sportsman abounded everywhere." A pass too steep for laden animals had to be crossed with the help of bearers. It is known as the Tan-pa Byeng, and is the western barrier of the Keum Kang region. "The summit is about twenty-eight hundred feet above sea-level. Thence in clear weather a view of the Diamond Mountains was said to be obtainable, and the name Tan-pa, which means 'Crop-hair,' was given to the ridge in the early days of Korean Buddhism, to signify that those who reached this point had taken refuge in the cloister, and should sever their connection with the world by parting with their hair.

"From Tan-pa Byeng, a journey of sixteen miles in a northeasterly direction brought us to Ch'ang-An-Sa, or the Temple of Eternal Rest, a Buddhist monastery at the foot of the Keum Kang San (Diamond Mountains). These mountains are a remarkable section of the main range which practically determines the east coast of Korea. Elsewhere the aspect of the chain is tame enough, but in the north of the Kang-wen province it suddenly starts into a towering mass of irregular, precipitous rocks, whose appearance earned for them many centuries ago their present designation. Viewed from the Eastern Sea, which is not more than thirty miles off as the crow flies, their serrated outline is very striking, and must always make them conspicuous. The district they occupy is a fairly well defined one, some thirty miles long by twenty broad. Few places are more renowned in any country than these mountains are in Korea; in popular estimation they are the beau-idéal of scenic loveliness, the perfection of wild beauty in Nature. I found that both Chinese and Japanese spoke and wrote of them, but more because they are a Buddhistic center than for any other reason. At Seoul a visit to Keum Kang San is quite fashionable,