FOOTNOTES:
[13] I am inclined to think that Europeans habitually underestimate the population. The average I obtained is 8 to a house, taking 70 houses at random, and this estimate is borne out by General Greathouse, for some years in Korean Government service, and Mr. Moffett, a resident and traveller in Korea for seven years, both of whom have given some attention to the subject. It must be understood that a Korean household rarely, if ever, consists of a man, wife and children only; there are parents and relationly hangers-on, to say nothing of possible servants.
[14] Such figures where they occur are always spoken of by foreigners as sheep, but I doubt whether this animal appears at any but royal tombs, where it is probably represented as offered in sacrifice by the King.
[15] These remarks apply to every part of Korea which I afterwards saw.
CHAPTER VII
VIEWS AFLOAT
A few hours sufficed for settling in our very narrow quarters, and by the end of the second day we had shaken down into an orderly routine. By dint of much driving Kim was induced to start about seven, at which hour I had my flour and water stirabout. The halts for smoking, cooking, and eating were many, and about five o’clock he used to simulate exhaustion, a deception to which his lean form and thin face with its straight straggling white hair lent themselves effectively. Then followed the daily wrangle about the place to tie up, Kim naturally desiring a village and the proximity of junks, with much nocturnal smoking and gossip, while my wish was for solitude, quiet, and a pebbly river bottom, and with Mr. Miller’s aid I usually carried my point. Between Kim’s laziness and the frequent occurrence of rapids, 10 miles came to be considered a good day’s journey! The same rapids made any settled plan of occupation impossible, yet on the early stages of the journey, when there were long quiet stretches of water between them, it was pleasant to elevate the roof and have a quiet morning’s work till dinner at twelve.
This, it must be confessed, was a precarious meal. Chickens for curry were not always attainable, and were often so small as to suggest the egg shell, and the river fish which were sometimes got by pouncing on a boy fisherman were very minute and bony. Chestnuts often eked out a very scanty meal. Wong used to hunt along the river banks for wild onions and carrots, after the stock of the cultivated roots was exhausted, and he made paste of flour and water, rolled it with a bamboo on the top of a box, cut it into biscuits with the lid of a tin, and baked them in the frying-pan. Rice fritters too he made morning, noon, and night. Afternoon tea of Burrough’s and Wellcome’s “tabloids” was never omitted, and after tying up came supper, an impoverished repetition of dinner, the whole a wholesome regimen, invariably eaten with appetite.
Visiting villages and small towns, only to find the first a collection of mud hovels, and the last mud hovels with the addition of ruinous official buildings and a forlorn Confucian temple, climbing to ridges bordering the Han to get a view of fertile and populous valleys, conversing with and interrogating the people through Mr. Miller and his servant, taking geographical notes, temperatures, altitudes, barometric readings, and measurements of the river (nearly all unfortunately lost in a rapid on the downward journey), collecting and drying plants, photographing, and developing negatives under difficulties, all the blankets and waterproofs in the boat being requisitioned for the creation of a “dark room”—all these occupations made up busy and interesting days.
The first two days were spent in turning the flank of the range on which is the so-called fortress of Nam Han, with its priest soldiers, one of the four which are supposed to guard Seoul and offer refuge in times of trouble. On the right bank there are many villages of farmers, woodcutters, and charcoal burners, and on the left an expanse of cultivated sandy soil between the mountains and the river, there a broad rapid stream rippling brightly over white sand or golden gravel. After passing the Yang-kun magistracy, a large village with a long street, where a whole fleet of sampans was loading with country produce for the capital, and a number of junks were unloading salt, the Han makes a sharp bend to the south, and after a long rapid expands into a very broad stream. The valley broadens also, and becomes flat, the hills, absolutely denuded even of scrub, are low, and recede from the river; their serrated black ridges of rock, and their deeply scored, corrugated, flushed sides, which spring had scarcely tinged with green, are forbidding, and though the valley was green with young wheat, that is quite the most monotonous and uninteresting part of the journey.
After circumventing the fine fortress summit of Nam Han, the river enters the mountains. From that time up to the head of possible navigation, the scenery in its variety, beauty, and unexpectedness exhausts the vocabulary of admiration.