A Visit to Quelpart.
There appeared in the Korean Repository in 1899 an interesting article on the island of Quelpart by Rev. A. A. Pieters, one of the few foreigners who have visited that place.
As a rule we hesitate to use our pages for the reproduction of material once published, but we believe that comparatively few of the readers of this Review saw that article and the subject is such an interesting one that we venture to reprint it here.
The island of Quelpart, or as Rev. W. E. Griffis, D.D. in his book on Korea calls it—the Sicily of Korea, or as Koreans call it, Chai-joo, is the largest island of the Korean archipelago and is situated south of the peninsula at a distance of some fifty miles from the mainland. The shape of the island is elliptical, and straight lines drawn between the two farthest and two nearest points thro the center would be forty and seventeen miles long. As you approach the island from the north at a distance of twenty miles it looks like an isosceles, the two sides rising at an angle of about seventeen degrees and only near the top turning a little steeper—something like Namsan as you look at it from the north gate of Seoul. The island rises gradually all round from the edges toward the center where the foot of Mount Auckland, or Hal-la-san, is planted.
All over the island are scattered small conical hills, which look very insignificant before the cloudy peak of Hal-la-san rising to the height of 6,558 feet. The origin of the island is decidedly volcanic, the mountain being most probably an extinct volcano. The flow of lava was toward the north and south-southwest, the streams being, the first, some twenty miles wide along the coast of the island and the second, some thirty miles. Thus the lava covered two-fifths of the whole area of the island. This part of it is very stony and very difficult to cultivate and gigantic labor must have been spent in trying to clear the fields of the innumerable stones. Often on a field of one acre there will be four or five piles of stone eight or ten feet high. Another way of disposing of these stones was to build walls between the fields, so that from the top of one of the small hills the land seems to be covered with a large irregular net. The other three-fifths of the island are almost free from stones and the soil is black and rich. The mountain slopes gradually towards the east and the west, but comes down abruptly in deep ravines towards the south and especially towards the north.
On the top of the mountain there is a small, round lake and at the bottom of one of the ravines another large lake. The first one is probably the old crater filled with water from the melting snow. We were told that ice lies on the top until June, altho the climate on the island is so warm that cabbage grows all winter in the open air. When we were there, towards the end of February, the grass in some places was four inches high and on the southern coast flowers were blooming. In spite of that a third of the mountain was covered with deep snow which would make all attempts to climb to the top useless. All the mountains as well as the hills to the east of it are covered with thick woods of oak. In these forests deer, wild hogs, hares and other animals abound but there are no tigers or bears. The hills that have no trees on them, are covered with the peculiar short Korean grass which makes such fine lawns. This grass is much prettier in Quelpart than anywhere on the mainland and often one comes across natural lawns four or five hundred yards square, with not a weed on them and all covered as with a heavy velvet carpet. The coast of Quelpart is devoid of harbors or any shelters, rocky, and the numerous small islands which are scattered so thickly all along the southern and western coast of Korea are absent here.
This absence of shelter together with the constant strong winds makes navigation very difficult.
One is surprised at the absence of streams and springs. On making our trip around the island we came across only two streams, and that after a whole week of rains. While there are some powerful springs in the city of Chai-joo, in the other two magistracies there are no springs nor any wells and the people have to use rain water gathered in artificial ponds. Where the water from the melting show on the mountain goes is a mystery.
As I above mentioned there are three magistracies on the island: Chai-Joo on the northern coast, the capital and the seat of the Governor (Mok-sa). Tai-Chung on the southwest coast and Chung Ui in the east part of the island. All the three cities are walled. Chai Joo counts some twelve hundred houses, Tai-chung, four hundred, and Chung Ui three hundred. The distance from Chai Joo to Tai Chung is ninety li, from there to Chung Ui a hundred and thirty li, and from Chung Ui to Chai Joo seventy li. Until the war the island belonged to Chul-lado: soon after the war it was made independent, and again when Korea was divided into thirteen provinces, Quelpart was put under the jurisdiction of the Governor (Quan-chul-sa) of South Chul-la-do. On the whole island there are said to be about a hundred villages and some hundred thousand people. These figures are given by the Koreans and of course are probably not quite true. All the villages lie either along the coast where the people can raise some rice or at the foot and along the sides of the mountain where fuel is plentiful and where Irish potatoes grow very well. The space between the shore and the foot of the mountain is not populated and long stretches of rich soil lie uncultivated. Only those woods and fields that are near the towns and larger villages have owners. All the rest of the island belongs to nobody and anyone may come and cut the trees or cultivate the ground. An oxload of wood which a man has to bring on his ox for ten or fifteen miles is sold in the cities for twelve cents. Of the cereals raised on the island millet takes the first place, and this is the main article of diet. Rice is a luxury and is eaten only by well-to-do people in the cities. In the villages the people never use it. This is on account of the scarceness of rice fields, of which there are only a few along the coast. The little rice there is mostly brought from the mainland. Besides millet, rice and Irish potatoes, the people raise barley, wheat, buckwheat, beans, sweet potatoes, tobacco, vegetables and a few other less important cereals. Of fruits peaches, oranges and pomeloes are the only things that grow there. Of animal food the islanders, like the people of the mainland, eat very little. It consists of beef, horse and dog meat, pork, game, fish and pearl oysters. Crabs, common oysters and all the different kinds of clams that are so plentiful on the southern and western coast of Korea are absent in the Quelpart waters. Owing to the rocky bottom of the sea very little, if any, net fishing is done and the fish are mostly caught with hooks. For going out into the sea to fish, boats are not employed. Instead of them people go out on small rafts made of some ten short logs with a platform built a foot above them to which an our is fastened. Instead of the tiny little frames not more than eight inches long, used by the fisherman on the mainland for fastening the string, the Quelpart fisherman uses regular rods made of bamboo some twelve feet long, and lack of fish, clams, etc., is supplied by the abundance of pearl oysters and seaweed, which are both used on the island and exported. The pearl oysters are very large some measuring ten inches in diameter, and very fleshy. Unlike other oysters, it has only one shell, which is often used by the Koreans as an ash tray and from which mother of pearl is obtained. Covered with this shell as with a roof the oyster lives fastened to a rock. Its meat is considered a luxurious dish and one oyster costs as much as six cents on the island. Pearls are but very seldom found in the oysters. For export the oysters are torn out of the shell; the intestine bag cut off, the meat cleaned, dried and strung on thin sticks. Altho white when fresh the color changes to a dark red, like that of a dried apricot. They can be seen displayed in the native grocery shops in Seoul, flat reddish disks about four inches in diameter fastened by tens with a thin stick stuck thro them.
Of the seaweeds there are several different kinds: some of them are used as fertilizers, some are used for food and some are sold to the Japanese for making carbonate of soda. The first kind is gathered on the seashore, but the other two have to be obtained from the bottom of the sea. It is strange to say that the diving for these weeds as well as for the pearl oysters is entirely done by women. Dressed in a kind of bathing suit with a sickle in one hand and a gourd with bag tied to it in front of them, they swim out from the shore as far as half a mile: boats cannot be afforded and they dive, probably a depth of forty or fifty feet, to the bottom, cut the weeds with the sickle, or if they find a pearl oyster, tear it off from the stone, and then put it into the bag which is kept floating by the gourd. They do not go back before the bag is filled, which often takes more than half an hour. Altho they are magnificent swimmers, one cannot help admiring their endurance, when he thinks that this work is begun in February. Of late Japanese supplied with diving apparatus, have been coming to Quelpart and catching all the pearl oysters, so that the poor women have to be satisfied with the weeds only. The magistrates told us that these Japanese never asked for permission nor paid anything for catching the pearl oysters. If it is so, the imposition upon the weak Koreans is surprising.
The Quelpart women not only dive for weeds and oysters but do the largest part of all work. Even ox loads of grain are brought to the city market for sale by women. The carrying of the water is done entirely by the women, who have often to go a long distance to fetch it. For carrying the water they use broad low pitchers set in a basket, which is fastened with strings around the shoulders and carried on the back. I never saw this done anywhere else in Korea as it is considered very disgraceful for a woman to carry anything on her back. I was told by the Koreans whom we had with us, that if on the mainland a man made his wife to do so he would be driven out of the village. Native hats, hair bands and skull-caps, which are extensively manufactured on the island are also mostly made by women. In fact the women of Quelpart might be called the Amazonians of Korea. They not only do all the work but greatly exceed the men in number, and on the streets one meets three women to one man. This is because so many men are away sailing. The women are more robust and much better looking than their sisters on the mainland. As almost everything is done by the women, there remains nothing else for the men to do but to loaf, and to do them credit they do it well. Except for a shop here and there in which a man is presiding with a long pipe in his mouth, it is very difficult to find a man doing anything. For this, however, they are not any better off, as all the islanders seem to be strikingly poor. Not only the food, but the clothes and houses are much worse than on the mainland. Dog skins are extensively used for making clothes. Hats, the shape of a tea-cup, overcoats, leggings, like those worn by the Chinese, and stockings are all made of dog skin with the hair outside, which for greater warmth are used untanned. A suit of such clothes is handed down from generation to generation, and the smell of it is far from being sweet. The women’s clothes as well the men’s trousers and shirts are made of native or Manchester sheeting. To make the sheeting stronger they dip it into the juice pressed out of some kind of a wild persimmon. This makes it a dirty brown color, which saves the trouble of washing it. The cloth is thus worn until it falls to pieces. Besides skin hats the men also use felt hats of the same shape as those worn by the Seoul chair coolies, only much larger, the brims measuring more than two feet in diameter. The one exception in respect of clothes is made by the people in the magistracies who wear the same white clothes and black hats as the people on the mainland.
The houses consist of one six foot room and an open kitchen. The walls, ceiling and floor of the room are bare, and the floor has no flues for heating it. Instead of this a large hole is dug in the floor of the kitchen and in the cold weather a fire is kept there day and night. Around this fire they eat, work, and sleep. This again is different in the cities where the houses are much the same as on the mainland. All the houses with a few exceptions are thatched. On account of the strong winds the thatch is fastened by a net of straw ropes two inches thick and eight inches apart.
The needs of the people for things outside of their own products seem to be so small that a few shops supply them all. In the capital, Chai-Joo, there are some eight small shops; in Tai-Chung one; and in Chung-Ui perhaps one. These are probably the only shops on the whole island and from them the people obtain the few needed foreign articles, such as shirting, dyes, thread, needles, nails, etc. The periodical markets which are held on the mainland and in all the towns and many villages every five days, are altogether absent, and on the whole trading seems to be yet in its infancy. The things exported from Quelpart are pearl oyster, seaweed, native medicine, cosmetic oil, horse and cow hides, horses and cattle. The cosmetic oil is pressed from the seeds of the fruit of the Ditnea Strawmium or, as the Koreans call it, Tang Paik. This tree grows abundantly all over the southern part of the island. It is evergreen and blooms in February with beautiful crimson flowers. On the mainland this tree is very rare.
(TO BE CONTINUED.)