Southern Korea is quite beautiful, with fine snow mountains and cultivated terraces, where rice is raised by irrigation. The red soil is very fertile, but the mountains are bare of trees, the Koreans having cut down the forests. As the Japanese have made good forest laws, however, the trees will now be allowed to grow again. The whole trip through Korea was beautiful and most interesting, and in the south particularly we noticed that numbers of Japanese immigrants were settling in the country.
The colonial possessions of Japan include not only Korea, but part of Saghalien, Formosa and one or two groups of islands in the north. It was to Saghalien that the most desperate of Russian convicts were sent for many years. The southern half was ceded to Japan after the Russo-Japanese War. It has proved quite a valuable asset, inasmuch as it contains extensive forests of pines, larches and other trees of sub-Arctic regions, is noted for its fisheries, and abounds in sables, the fur of which is shipped to Japan. These last are perhaps not so fine as the best Russian sables, but they are of good quality, nevertheless.
Formosa, which I had seen on a previous visit to the East, lies to the southward, off the coast of China. About one half as large as Ireland, it consists in the west of a narrow, fertile plain, and in the centre and east of mountains, which descend to the coast in sheer precipices over three thousand feet high. Mt. Morrison, the loftiest peak on the island, is higher than Fuji, and has been renamed by the Japanese Nii-taka-yama, the New High Mountain. The ascent of Mt. Morrison discloses all the variety and luxuriance of vegetation seen nowhere except on a peak in the tropics. At the lower levels are palms, banyans, huge camphor trees, tree-ferns and rare orchids, and impenetrable growths of rattans; higher up are cryptomerias—giant cedars; still higher, pine-trees; and alternate tracts of forest and areas of grass land extend to the very top.
The word formosa, which means beautiful, was given to the island by the first Portuguese navigators who sailed along its coast. It is indeed one of the loveliest islands of the Far East. In the late afternoon, the day we passed by, the sky was a hazy grey and the island a delicate mauve. The sun disappeared behind the peaks, and the heavens became a glowing red, transforming the mountains into dark, flaming volcanoes. As darkness came on, the heat was so great that we slept on deck. The beautiful Southern Cross gleamed above the horizon, and the glory of the sunset gave place to the wonderful, mystic charm of a tropical night.
After having been occupied by China for over two centuries, Formosa was ceded to Japan in 1895. Here, as in Korea, Japanese administration has introduced great changes, and it is difficult to realize that railways and electric lights are to be found in this remote part of the earth. In return Formosa supplies Japan with rice, tea and sugar. It also produces nearly all the camphor used in the world.
The Chinese, during their possession of the island, inhabited only the western section, and had no power whatever over the wild Malays of the eastern half. These savages are head-hunters, and are difficult to handle, because they enjoy above everything else that most terrible and exciting game in the world, the game of taking another man's head. They dance war dances, and keep the skulls of their slain enemies as drinking-cups, from which they drink wine made from the brains of their victims. The Japanese have devised an ingenious scheme for keeping the head-hunters under control and conquering them. They have encircled the mountain peaks with a live electric wire, and have stationed guards at intervals along the line. The natives have learned the danger of this. Now the Japanese are gradually moving the wire higher and higher, so eventually they will have the savages pocketed, and will subdue them by starvation or otherwise.
After our brief stay in Seoul we bade farewell to the Colonies and turned our faces toward the Land of the Rising Sun itself, making the crossing from Chosen to Shimonoseki in a single night. This is far pleasanter than the passage from Vladivostok, which requires several days. In order to attract travellers, the Japanese have put their best cars and boats on this route. Our last glimpse of the Hermit Kingdom was a picture of jagged peaks rising in lofty precipices from a moonlit sea, their black masses outlined in solemn grandeur against the heavens.