Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/48

 as we write, information comes that a party of three men returned from two days' shooting with five hundred and sixty pounds of birds. Quail, snipe and other small birds are found in large quantities, but the hunter scorns them in view of the larger game. Various kinds of storks, cranes and herons find abundance of food in the flooded paddy-fields, where no one thinks of disturbing them. One of the sights of Seoul is its airy scavengers, the hawks, who may be seen sometimes by the score sailing about over the town. Now and again one of them will sweep down and seize a piece of meat from a bowl that a woman is carrying home on her head. It is not uncommon to see small boys throwing dead mice into the air to see the hawks swoop down and seize them before they reach the ground.

Korea contains plenty of snakes, but none of them are specially venomous, although there are some whose bite will cause considerable irritation. Many snakes live among the tiles of the roofs, where they subsist on the sparrows that make their nests under the eaves. These snakes are harmless fellows, and when you see one hanging down over your front door in the dusk of evening it should cause no alarm. The people say, and believe it too, that if a snake lives a thousand years it assumes a short and thick shape and acquires wings, with which it flies about with inconceivable rapidity, and is deadly not only because of its bite, but if a person even feels the wind caused by its lightning flash as it speeds by he will instantly die. Formerly, according to Korean tradition, there were no snakes in Korea; but when the wicked ruler Prince Yunsan (1495-1506) had worn himself out with a life of excesses, he desired to try the effect of keeping a nest of snakes under his bed, for he had heard that this would restore lost vitality. So he sent a boat to India, and secured a cargo of selected ophidians, and had them brought to Korea. The cargo was unloaded at Asan; but it appears that the stevedores had not been accustomed to handle this kind of freight, and so a part of the reptiles made their escape into the woods. From that time; so goes the tale, snakes have existed