The legend of the altar-piece runs thus. When fifty-three priests come to Korea from India to introduce Buddhism, they reached this place, and being weary, sat down by a well under a spreading tree. Presently three dragons came up from the well and began a combat with the Buddhists, in the course of which they called up a great wind which tore up the tree. Not to be out-manœuvred, each priest placed an image of Buddha on a root of the tree, turning it into an altar. Finally, the priests overcome the dragons, forced them into the well, and piled great rocks on the top of it to keep them there, founded the monastery, and built this temple over the dragons’ grave. On either side of this unique altar-piece is a bouquet of peonies 4 feet wide by 10 feet high.
The “private apartments” of this and the other monasteries consist of a living room, and very small single cells, each with the shrine of its occupant, and all very clean. It must be remembered, however, that this easy, peaceful, luxurious life only lasts for a part of the year, and that all but a few of the monks must make an annual tramp, wallet and begging-bowl in hand, over rough, miry, or dusty Korean roads, put up with vile and dirty accommodation, beg for their living from those who scorn their tonsure and their creed, and receive “low talk” from the lowest in the land.
Just before we left, the old abbot invited us into his very charming suite of rooms, and with graceful hospitality prepared a repast for us with his own hands—square cakes of rich oily pine nuts glued together with honey, thin cakes of “popped” rice and honey, sweet cake, Chinese sweetmeat, honey, and bowls of honey water with pine nuts floating on its surface. The oil of these nuts certainly supplied the place of animal food during my enforced abstinence from it, but rich vegetable oil and honey soon pall on the palate, and the abbot was concerned that we did not do justice to our entertainment. The general culture produced by Buddhism at these monasteries, and the hospitality, consideration, and gentleness of deportment, contrast very favorably with the arrogance, superciliousness, insolence, and conceit which I have seen elsewhere in Korea among the so-called followers of Confucius.
When we departed all the monks and laborers bade us a courteous farewell, some of the older priests accompanying us for a short distance.
After descending the slope by the well-made road which leads down to the large monastery of Sin-kyei Sa, at the northeast foot of the Keum-Kang San, we left it for a rough and difficult westerly track, which, after affording some bright gleams of the Sea of Japan, enters dense forest full of great boulders and magnificent specimens of the Filix mas and Osmumda regalis. A severe climb up and down an irregular, broken staircase of rock took us over the Ki-cho Pass, 3,700 feet in altitude, after which there is a tedious march of some hours along bare and unpicturesque mountain-sides before reaching the well-made path which leads through pine woods to the beautiful plateau of Chang-an Sa. The young priest had kept our baggage carefully, but the heat of his floor had melted the candles in the boxes and had turned candy into molasses, making havoc among photographic materials at the same time!
CHAPTER XII
ALONG THE COAST
On leaving Chang-an Sa for Wön-san we retraced our route as far as Kal-rön-gi, and afterwards crossed the Mak-pai Pass, from which there is a grand view of the Keum-Kang San. Much of a somewhat tedious day was spent in crossing a rolling elevated plateau bordered by high denuded hills, on which the potatoe flourishes at a height of 2,500 feet. The soil is very fertile, but not being suited to rice, is very little occupied. Crossing the Sai-kal-chai, 2,200 feet in altitude, the infamous road descends on a beautiful alluvial valley, a rich farming country, sprinkled with hamlets and surrounded by pretty hills wooded with scrub oak, which in the spring is very largely used for fertilizing rice fields. The branches are laid on the inundated surface till the leaves rot off, and they are then removed for fuel. In this innocent-looking valley the tiger scare was in full force. A tiger, the people said, had carried off a woman the previous week, and a dog and pig the previous night. It seemed incredible, yet there was a consensus of evidence. Tigers are occasionally trapped in that region by baiting a pit with a dog or pig, and the ensnared animal is destroyed by poison or hunger to avoid injury to the skin, which, if it is that of a fine animal, is very valuable.
A man is not the least ashamed of saying that he has not nerve or pluck for tiger-hunting, which in Korea is a dangerous game, for the hunters are stationed at the head of a gorge, usually behind brushwood, and sometimes behind rocks, the big game, tigers and leopards, being driven up towards them by large bodies of men. When one realizes that the arms used are matchlocks lighted by slow matches from cords wound round the arm, and that the charge consists of three imperfectly rounded balls the size of a pea, and that, owing to the thickness of the screen behind which the hunters are posted, the game is only sighted when quite close upon them, one ceases to wonder at the reluctance of the village peasants to turn out in pursuit of a man-eater, even though the bones bring a very high price as Chinese medicine.
We put up at the only inn in the region. It had no “clean room,” but the landlord’s wife gave up hers to me on condition that I would not keep the door open for fear of a tiger. The temperature was 93°, and to secure a little ventilation and yet keep my promise, I tore the paper off the lattice-work of the door. Mr. Miller described his circumstances thus. “I wanted to sleep in the yard, but the host would not let me for fear of tigers, so I had to sleep in a room 8 feet by 10” (with a hot floor), “with seven other men, a cat, and a bird. By tearing the paper off a window near my head I saved myself from death by suffocation, and could have had a good night’s rest had not the four horses been crowded into two stalls in the kitchen. They found their quarters so close that they squealed, kicked, bit, and fought all night, and their drivers helped them to make night hideous by their yelling.” Nobody slept, and I had my full share of the unrest and disturbance, a bad preparation for an eleven hours’ ride on the next day, which was fiercely hot, as were the remaining six days of the journey.
The road from this lofty tiger-haunted valley to the sea level at Chyung-Tai is for the most part through valleys very sparsely peopled. Much forest land, however, was being cleared for the planting of cotton, and the peasant farmers are energetic enough to carry their cultivation to a height of 2,000 feet. [On nearly the whole of this journey I estimated that the land is capable of supporting double its present population.] At Hoa-chung, a prettily situated market-place, a student who had successfully passed the literary examination at the Kwagga in Seoul, surrounded by a crowd in bright colored festive clothing, was celebrating his return by sacrificing at his father’s grave. On the various roads there were many processions escorting village students home from the great competition in the Royal presence at the capital, the student in colored clothes, on a gaily-caparisoned horse or ass, with music and flags in front of him, and friends, gaily dressed, walking beside him. On approaching his village he was met with flags and music, the headman and villagers, even the women in gay apparel, going out to welcome him. After this success he was entitled to erect a tall pole, with a painted dragon upon it, in front of his house. Success was, however, very costly, and often hung the millstone of debt round a man’s neck for the remainder of his life. After “passing” the student became eligible for official position, the sole object of ambition to an “educated” Korean.