BEYOND THE CAPITAL
Save in the first few li from the capital, we abandoned the beaten tracks, travelling along quiet byways and mountain paths, turning aside at fancy to climb a peak or to take a swim in the cool, deep waters of some secluded pool at night, and morning, and at our noonday halt. In the pleasant shades of these cool mountains and sunlit valleys the people live in unrebuked simplicity. They offered the loan of charcoal stoves or retailed eggs, chickens and rice to my servants. At the moment of my bath, youths and youngsters gambolled with me in the stream. It is said that the Koreans are far from clean, a statement they belied upon many occasions by the freedom and enjoyment with which they indulged in these dips. Foreigners had not penetrated along the route which my friend and I were following to the German mines, and even the ubiquitous evangelist had not penetrated to these peasant homes. The mountains and rivers had no names; the settlements were small; inns did not exist. Everywhere was contentment, peace, and infinite repose. Nature stood revealed to us in primæval grandeur, and it was impossible not to enjoy the calm of the valleys, the rugged beauty of the mountain crests, the picturesque wildness of the scenery.
WOODLAND GLADES
As the days passed the general character of the country remained unaltered. The manifold and complex tints in the bush, the differing aspects of each succeeding height, the alternating complexion of the valleys, dissipated the monotony, engendered by the never changing features of the picture—the trees and mountains, hillside hamlets and mountain torrents, precipitous passes and windy plateaux. Moving thus slowly through the mountain passes, a wonderful panorama silently disclosed itself. Hills were piled one upon another, gradually merging into chains of mountains, the crests of which, two and three thousand feet in height, stood out clearly defined against an azure sky, their rock-bound faces covered with birch, beech, oak and pine. The valleys below these mountain chains were long and narrow, cool and cultivated. A hillside torrent dashed through them, tumbling noisily over massive boulders, gradually fretting a new course for itself in the lava strata. Countless insects buzzed in the still air; frogs croaked in the marsh meadows; the impudent magpie and the plebeian crow choked and chattered indignantly among the branches of the trees. Cock-pheasants started from the thick cover of the low-lying hills, the dogs pointed the nests of the sitting hens, and does called to their calves among the young bushes. A calm and happy nature revealed itself spontaneously in these fragrant places, undisturbed, luxurious, and unrestrained. The road was rough. Here and there, in keeping with the wild and rugged beauty of the scene, it became the narrow track of the Australasian “backs,” congested with bushes, broken by holes and stones, almost impassable until the coolies made a way.
Across the clattering crystal of the gushing torrent a rustic bridge was flung, the merest makeshift, three feet in width, with a flooring of earth and bush, which bent and swayed upon slender poles, beneath the slightest burden. Some streams were unbridged, and the diminutive ponies splashed through them, gladly cooling their sweating flanks as their drivers waded or carried one another to the distant bank. Wild ferns, butterflies, and flowers revelled in these unkempt gardens. The red dog-lily and purple iris glowed against the foliage of the shrubs and bushes. Gigantic butterflies eclipsed the glories of the rainbow; their gorgeous tints blending into harmony with the more subdued plumage of the cranes and storks that floated lazily across the inundated spaces of the paddy-fields. Other birds, with dove-grey, pink, or yellow breasts and black pinions, fished in the streams with raucous cries. The most amazing tints, recalling some of Turner’s later pictures, gladdened the eye in these delightful valleys. In the depths of the valleys the mountain torrents flowed more idly, and the stream meandered in a thousand directions. Upon either bank, its volume was diverted to the needs of some adjacent rice-field. In these paddy-patches green and tender shoots were just sprouting above a few inches of clear water. Here and there, fields of wheat bordered these water-soaked stretches; oats, corn, barley, tobacco, cotton, beans and millet were scattered about the sides and plains of the mountain valleys in a fashion which proclaimed the fertility of the soil.
Everything throve, however, and the industry of the workers in the fields was manifested at every turn of the road. Their ingenuity in making the most of available land recalled the valleys which run down to the fiords of Norway, where, as in Korea, patches of cultivated ground are visible at the snow level. Here, in these beautiful valleys, perhaps a thousand or fifteen hundred feet up the mountain side, acres of golden crops will be growing in the warm and happy seclusion of some sheltered hollow.