It is not till the three years’ mourning for a father has expired that his tablet is removed to the ancestral temple which rich men have near their houses. During the period of mourning it is kept in a vacant room, usually in the women’s apartments. A poor man puts it in a box on one side of his room, and when he worships his other ancestors, strips of paper with their names upon them are pasted on the mud wall. I have slept in rooms in which the tablet lay smothered in dust on one of the crossbeams. Common people only worship for their ancestors of three generations. The anniversary of a father’s death is kept with much ceremony for three years. On the previous night sacrifice is offered before the tablet, and on the following day the friends pay visits of condolence to the family, and eat varieties of food. During the day they visit the grave and offer sacrifices to the soul and the mountain spirit.
A widow wears mourning all her life. If she has no son she acts the part of a son in performing the ancestral rites for her husband. It has not been correct for widows to remarry. If, however, a widow inherits property she occasionally marries to rid herself of importunities, in which case she is usually robbed and deserted.
The custom of tolerating the remarriage of widows has, however, lately been changed into the right of remarriage.
CHAPTER XXV
SONG-DO: A ROYAL CITY
It grew dark before we reached Pa Ju, and the mapu were in great terror of tigers and robbers. It is unpleasant to reach a Korean inn after nightfall, for there are no lights by which to unload the baggage, and noise and confusion prevail.
When the traveller arrives a man rushes in with a brush, stirs up the dust and vermin, and sometimes puts down a coarse mat. Experience has taught me that an oiled sheet is a better protection against vermin than a pony-load of insect powder. I made much use of the tripod of my camera. It served as a candle-stand, a barometer suspender, and an arrangement on which to hang my clothes at night out of harm’s way. In two hours after arrival my food was ready, after which Mr. Yi came in to talk over the day, to plan the morrow, to enlighten me on Korean customs, and to interpret my orders to the faithful Im, and by 8.30 I was asleep!
After leaving Pa Ju the country is extremely pretty, and one of the most picturesque views in Korea is from the height overlooking the romantically situated village of Im-jin, clustering along both sides of a ravine, which terminates on the broad Im-jin Gang, a tributary of the Han, in two steep rocky bluffs, sprinkled with the Pinus sinensis, the two being connected by a fine, double-roofed granite Chinese gateway, inscribed “Gate for the tranquillization of the West.” The road passing down the village street reaches the water’s edge through this relic, one of three or four similar barriers on this high-road to China. The Im-jin Gang, there 343 yards broad, has shallow water and a flat sandy shore on its north side, but a range of high bluffs, crowned with extensive old defensive works, lines the south side, the gateway being the only break for many miles. Below these the river is a deep green stream, navigable for craft of 14 tons for 40 miles from its mouth. There was a still, faintly blue atmosphere, and the sails of boats passing dreamily into the mountains over the silver water had a most artistic effect.
There are two Chinese bridges on that road, curved slabs of stone, supported on four-sided blocks of granite, giving one a feeling of security, even though they have no parapets. Korean bridges are poles laid over a river, with matting or brushwood covered with earth upon them, and are usually full of holes. These precarious structures had just been replaced after the summer rains. A mapu usually goes ahead to test their solidity. The region is extremely fertile, producing fine crops of rice, wheat, barley, millet, buckwheat, cotton, sesamum, castor oil, beans, maize, tobacco, capsicums, egg plant, peas, etc. But Russian and American kerosene is fast displacing the vegetable oils for burning, and is producing the same revolution in village evening life which it has effected in the Western Islands of Scotland. I never saw a Korean hamlet south of Phyöng-yang, however far from the main road, into which kerosene had not penetrated.
I was obliged to halt for the night when only 10 li from Song-do, all the more regretfully, because the people were unwilling to receive a foreigner, and the family room which I occupied, only 8 feet 6 inches by 6 feet, was heated up to 85°, was poisoned with the smell of cakes of rotting beans, and was so alive with vermin of every description that I was obliged to suspend a curtain over my bed to prevent them from falling upon it.
The next morning, in an atmosphere which idealized everything, we reached Song-do, or Kai-söng, now the second city in the kingdom, once the capital of Hon-jö, one of the three kingdoms which united to form Korea, and the capital of Korea five centuries ago. A city of 60,000 people, lying to the south of Sang-dan San, with a wall ten miles in circumference running irregularly over heights, and pierced by double-roofed gateways, with a peaked and splintered ridge extending from Sang-dan San to the northeast, its higher summits attaining altitudes of from 2,000 to 3,000 feet, it has a striking resemblance to Seoul.