The hair is dressed differently by single and married men. If unmarried, they adopt the queue; when married, they put up their hair and twist it into a conical mass upon their heads, keeping it in place by a woven horsehair band, which completely encircles the forehead and base of the skull. A few, influenced by Western manners, have cropped their hair. This is specially noticeable among the soldiers on duty in the city, while, in compliance with the orders of the Emperor, all military and civil officials in the capital have adopted the foreign style. Boys and girls, the queerest and most dirty little brats, are permitted up to a certain age to roam about the streets, to play in the gutters, and about the sewage pits in a state of complete nudity—a form of economy which is common throughout the Far East. The boys quickly drift into clothes and occupations of a kind. The girls of the poorer orders are sold as domestic slaves and become attached to the households of the upper classes. From their subsequent appearance in the street, when they run beside the chairs of their mistresses, it is quite evident that they are taught to be clean and even dainty in their appearance. At this youthful age they are quaint and healthy looking children. The conditions under which they live, however, soon produce premature exhaustion.
Despite the introduction of certain reforms, there is still much of the old world about Seoul, many relics of the Hermit Kingdom. Women are still most carefully secluded. The custom, which allows those of the upper classes to take outdoor exercise only at night, is observed. Men are, however, no longer excluded from the streets at such hours. The spectacle of these white spectres of the night, flitting from point to point, their footsteps lighted by the rays of the lantern which their girl-slaves carry before them, is as remarkable as the appearance of Seoul by daylight, with its moving masses all garmented in white. A street full of Koreans aptly suggests, as Mr. Henry Norman, M.P., once wrote, the orthodox notion of the Resurrection. It cannot be denied that the appearance of both men and women makes the capital peculiarly attractive. The men are fine, well-built and peaceful fellows, dignified in their bearing, polite and even considerate towards one another. The type shows unmistakable evidences of descent from the half savage and nomadic tribes of Mongolia and Northern Asia and the Caucasian peoples from Western Asia.
These two races, coming from the North in the one case and drifting up from the South in the other, at the time of the Ayraan invasion of India, peopled the north and south of Korea. Finally merging among themselves, they gave to the world a composite nation, distinct in types, habits, and speech, and amalgamated only by a rare train of circumstances over which they could have had no control. It is by the facial resemblances that the origin of the Koreans may be traced to a Caucasian race. The speech of the country, while closely akin to Chinese, reproduces sounds and many verbal denominations which are found in the languages of India. Korea has submitted to the influence of Chinese arts and literature for centuries, but there is little actual agreement between the legends of the two countries. The folk-lore of China is in radical disagreement with the vague and shadowy traditions of the people of Korea. There is a vast blank in the early history of Korea, at a period when China is represented by many unimpaired records. Research can make no advance in face of it; surmise and logical reflections from extraneous comparisons alone can supply the requisite data. Posterity is thus presented with an unrecorded chapter of the world’s history, which at the best can be only faintly sketched.
MEANS OF LOCOMOTION
CHAPTER IV
The heart of the capital—Domestic Economy—Female slavery—Standards of morality—A dress rehearsal
