Page:Village life in Korea (1911).djvu/95

Rh ponies, loaded with grain or other merchandise, following in single file, one after another, as they bear their burdens from place to place in different parts of the country. A trip of two or three hundred miles with one of these pony trains is nothing out of the ordinary. All this makes it necessary that there should be plenty of inns on every country road.

The inns are not only prepared to care for the men that come, but also for the ponies and the cows. In most respects the inns are like the other houses in the village so far as the house itself is concerned, except for the fact that it must have more room both for man and beast. The inn can be told by the large front door, which is wide enough for the ponies to enter with their loads on their backs. The Korean horseman is a past master in the art of loading and tying a load on the back of a pony. The house is built around a small court, which is used for the purpose of loading and unloading the packs. In the front the stalls will nearly always be found, and next to them come the rooms for the men, who always want to be near the ponies during the, night to keep them from fighting. "As the sparks fly upward," so the Korean pony is prone to kick and bite. He often requires his master to get up at all sorts of unseemly hours of the night to make him stop kicking his neighbor. Thus he spends the time kicking, pawing, and squealing from dusky eve till early morn. He is nearly, always in evidence in and around the inn, very much to the discomfort of the weary traveler who is trying to sleep. It may be said of the Korean pony that his habits are