Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/41

 alive. There is hardly a hut in Seoul where no flower is found.

As for animal life, Korea has a generous share. The magnificent bullocks which carry the heavy loads, draw the carts and pull the ploughs are the most conspicuous. It is singular that the Koreans have never used milk or any of its products, though the cow has existed in the peninsula for at least thirty-five hundred years. This is one of the proofs that the Koreans have never been a nomadic people. Without his bullock the farmer would be all at sea. No other animal would be able to drag a plough through the adhesive mud of a paddy-field. Great mortality among cattle, due to pleuro-pneumonia, not infrequently becomes the main cause of a famine. There are no oxen in Korea. Most of the work is done with bullocks, which are governed by a ring through the nose and are seldom obstreperous. Every road in Korea is rendered picturesque by long lines of bullocks carrying on their backs huge loads of fuel in the shape of grass, fagots of wood or else fat bags of rice and barley. As might be expected, cowhides are an important article of export.

The Korean pony is unique, at least in Eastern Asia. It is a little larger than the Shetland pony, but is less heavily built. Two thousand years ago, it is said, men could ride these animals under the branches of the fruit trees without lowering the head. They differ widely from the Manchu or Japanese horse, and appear to be indigenous—unless we may believe the legend that when the three sages arose from a fissure in the ground in the island of Quelpart three thousand years ago, each of them found a chest floating in from the south and containing a colt, a calf, a pig, a dog and a wife. The pony is not used in ploughing or drawing a cart, for it is not heavy enough for such work, but it is used under the pack and under the saddle, frequently under both, for often the traveller packs a huge bundle on the pony and then seats himself on top, so that the animal forms but a vulgar fraction of the whole