Page:Village life in Korea (1911).djvu/59

Rh Among all the cities of the world Seoul stands unique, in a class to itself. There is nothing else like it under the sun. It has an estimated population of two hundred thousand or more, many of whom live outside the walls. There are two great streets in the city — the South Gate Street, leading from the South Gate to the great bell in the center of the city, and the Bell or East Gate Street. These, unlike the streets of most Eastern cities, are very wide and join at the bell tower. There are also three or four other wide streets in the city, but they are hardly long enough to be called great streets. The one leading out from the old North Palace is fully as wide as Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington City. The other streets, if we may dignify them with the name, are hardly more than crooked alleys which seem to run with no purpose whatever except to furnish passage to and from the rows of mud huts which line them from one end to the other. Notwithstanding the high mountains about the city, the streets are almost level, there being just fall enough for the water in the side ditches to find its way slowly to the great central canal which runs through the city from northwest to southeast and finds its way out under the city wall.

All the streets are entirely innocent of sidewalks, but instead each side is beautified (?) with an open ditch which serves as a sewer for all manner of filth known to a great city like this. The houses are built in long rows along the sides of these ditches, every house being provided with a convenient loophole