A Post Office had been established in Song-do under Korean management, and I not only received but sent a letter, which reached its destination safely! Buddhism still prevails to some extent in this city, and large sums are expended upon the services of sorcerers. In Song-do I saw, what very rarely may be seen in Seoul and elsewhere, a “Red Door.” These are a very high honor reserved for rare instances of faithfulness in widows, loyalty in subjects, and piety in sons. When a widow (almost invariably of the upper class) weeps ceaselessly for her husband, maintains the deepest seclusion, attends loyally to her father- and mother-in-law, and spends her time in pious deeds, the people of the neighborhood, proud of her virtues, represent them to the Governor of the province, who conveys their recommendation to the King, with whom it rests to confer the “Red Door.” The distinction is also given to the family of an eminently loyal subject, who has given his life for the King’s life.
The case of a son whose father has reached a great age is somewhat different, and the honor is more emphatic still. His filial virtue is shown by such methods as these. He goes every morning to his father’s apartments, asks him how his health is, how he has slept, what he has eaten for breakfast, and how he enjoyed the meal—if he has any fancies for dinner, and if he shall go to the market and buy him some tai (the best fish in Korea), and if he shall come back and assist him to take a walk? The reader will observe how extremely material the pious son’s inquiries are. Such assiduity continued during a course of years, on being represented to the King, may receive the coveted red portal. In former days, these matters used to be referred to the Suzerain, the Emperor of China. In Song-do, as in the villages, a straw fringe is frequently to be seen stretched across a door, either plain or with bits of charcoal knotted into it. The former denotes the birth of a girl, the latter that of a boy. A girl is not specially welcome, nor is the occasion one of festivity, but neither is it, as in some countries, regarded as a calamity, although, if it be a firstborn, the friends of the father are apt to write letters of condolence to him, with the consoling suggestion that “the next will be a boy.”
CHIL-SUNG MON, SEVEN STAR GATE.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE PHYÖNG-YANG BATTLEFIELD
Glorious weather favored my departure from the ancient Korean capital. The day’s journey lay through pretty country, small valleys, and picturesquely shaped hills, on which the vegetation, whatever it was, had turned to a purple as rich as the English heather blossom, while the blue gloom of the pines emphasized the flaming reds of the dying leafage. The villages were few and small, and cultivation was altogether confined to the valleys. Pheasants were so abundant that the mapu pelted them out of the cover by the roadside, and wild ducks abounded on every stream. The one really fine view of the day is from the crest of a hill just beyond O-hung-suk Ju, where there is a second defensive gate, with a ruinous wall carried along a ridge for some distance on either side. The masonry and the gate-house are fine, and the view down the wild valley beyond with its rich autumn coloring was almost grand. It was evident that officials were expected, for the road was being repaired everywhere—that is, spadefuls of soft soil were being taken from the banks and roadsides, and were being thrown into the ruts and holes to deepen the quagmire which the next rain would produce. From four to seven men were working at each spade! A great part of the male population had turned out; for when an official of rank is to travel, every family in the district must provide one male member or a substitute to put the road in order. The repairs of the roads and bridges devolve entirely on the country people.
The following day brought a change of weather. My room had no hot floor and the mercury at daybreak was only 20°! When we started, a strong northwester was blowing, which increased to a gale by noon, the same fierce gale in which at Chemulpo H.M.S. Edgar lost her boat with forty-seven men. My pony and I would have been blown over a wretched bridge had not four men linked themselves together to support us; and later, on the top of a precipice above a river, a gust came with such force that the animals refused to face it, and one of them was as nearly lost as possible. By noon it was impossible to sit on our horses, and we fought the storm on foot. When Im lifted me from my pony I fell down, and it took several men shouting with laughter to set me on my feet again. When Mr. Yi and I spoke to each other, our voices had a bobbery clatter, and sentences broke off halfway in an insane giggle. I felt as if there were hardly another “shot in the locker,” but if a traveller “says die,” the men lose all heart, so I summoned up all my pluck, took a photograph after the noon halt, and walked on at a good pace.
But the wind, with the mercury at 26°, was awful, gripping the heart and benumbing the brain. I have not felt anything like it since I encountered the “devil wind” on the Zagros heights in Persia. At some distance from our destination Mr. Yi, Im, and the mapu begged me to halt, as they could no longer face it, though the accommodation for man and beast at Tol Maru, where we put up, was the worst imaginable, and the large village the filthiest, most squalid, and most absolutely poverty-stricken place I saw in that land of squalor. The horses were crowded together, and their baffled attempts at fighting were only less hideous than the shouts and yells of the mapu, who were constantly being roused out of a sound sleep to separate them.
My room was 8 feet by 6, and much occupied by the chattels of the people, besides being alive with cockroaches and other forms of horrid life. The dirt and discomfort in which the peasant Koreans live are incredible.
An uninteresting tract of country succeeded, and some time was occupied in threading long treeless valleys, cut up by stony beds of streams, margined by sandy flats, inundated in summer, and then covered chiefly with withered reeds, asters, and artemisia, a belated aster every now and then displaying its untimely mauve blossom. All these and the dry grasses and weeds of the hillsides were being cut and stacked for fuel, even brushwood having disappeared. This work is done by small boys, who carry their loads on wooden saddles suited to their size. That region is very thinly peopled, only a few hamlets of squalid hovels being scattered over it, and cultivation was rare and untidy, except in one fine agricultural valley where wheat and barley were springing. No animals, except a breed of pigs not larger than English terriers, were to be seen.