On mats on the ground are exposed straw mats, straw and string shoes, flints for use with steel, black buckram dress hats, coarse, narrow cotton cloth of Korean manufacture, rope muzzles for horses (much needed), sweeping whisks, wooden sabots, and straw, reed, and bamboo hats in endless variety. On these also are rough iron goods, family cooking-pots, horseshoes, spade-shoes, door-rings, nails, and carpenter’s tools, when of native manufacture, as rough as they can be; and Korean roots and fruits, tasteless and untempting, great hard pears much like raw parsnips, chestnuts, peanuts, persimmons which had been soaked in water to take the acridity out of them, and ginger. There were coops of fowls and piles of pheasants, brought down by falcons, gorgeous birds, selling at six for a yen (about 4d. each), and torn and hacked pieces of bull beef.
One prominent feature of that special market was the native pottery, both coarse and brittle ware, clay, with a pale green glaze rudely applied, small jars and bowls chiefly, and a coarser ware, nearly black and slightly iridescent, closely resembling iron. This pottery is of universal use among the poor for cooking-pots, water-jars, refuse-jars, receptacles for grain and pulse, and pickle-jars 5 feet high, roomy enough to hold a man, two of which are a bull’s load. At that season these jars were in great request, for the peasant world was occupied, the men in digging up a great hard white radish weighing from 2 to 4 lbs., and the women in washing its great head of partially blanched leaves, which, after being laid aside in these jars in brine, form one great article of a Korean peasant’s winter diet.
Umbrella hats, oiled paper, hat-covers, pounded capsicums, rice, peas, and beans, bean curd, and other necessaries of Korean existence, were there, but business was very dull, and the crowds of people were nearly as quiet as the gentle bulls which stood hour after hour among them. Late in the afternoon, the pedlars packed up their wares and departed en route for the next centre, and a good deal of hard drinking closed the day. I have been thus minute in my description because the peripatetic merchant really represents the fashion of Korean trade, and the wares which are brought to market are both the necessaries and luxuries of Korean existence.
The reader will agree with me that, except for a certain amount of insight into Korean customs which can only be gained by mixing freely with Koreans, the journey from Seoul to Phyöng-yang tends to monotony, though at the time Mr. Yi’s brightness, intelligence, sense of fun, and unvarying good-nature made it very pleasant. Among the few features of interest on the road are the “Hill Towns,” of which three are striking objects, specially one on the hill opposite to the magistracy of Pyeng-san, the hilltop being surrounded by a battlemented wall two miles in circuit, enclosing a tangled thicket containing a few hovels and the remains of some granaries. Unwalled towns are supposed to possess such strongholds, with stores of rice and soy, as refuges in times of invasion or rebellion, but as they have not been required for three centuries, they are now ruinous. The one on a high hill above Sai-nam, where the last Chinese gate occurs, is imposing from its fine gateway and the extent of ground it encloses.
Two days before reaching Phyöng-yang we crossed the highest pass on the road, and by a glen wooded with such deciduous trees, shrubs, and trailers as ash, elæagnus, euonymus, hornbeam, oak, lime, Acanthopanax ricinifolia, actinidia with scarlet berries, clematis, Ampelopsis Veitchii, etc., descended to the valley of the Nam-chhon, a broad but shallow stream which joins the Tai-döng. On the right bank, where the stream, crossed by a dilapidated bridge, is 128 yards wide, the town of Whang Ju is picturesquely situated, 36 li from the sea, at the base of two low fir-crowned hills, which terminate in cliffs above the Nam-chhon.
A battlemented wall 9 li in circumference, with several fine towers and gateways, encloses the town, and being carried along the verge of the cliff and over the downs and ups of the hills, has a very striking appearance. It was a singularly attractive view. The Korean sky was at its bluest, and the winding Nam-chhon was seen in glimpses here and there through the broad fertile plain in reaches as blue, and the broken sparkle of its shallow waters flashed in sapphire gleams against the gray rock and the gray walls of the city. On the wall, and grouped in the handsome Water Gate, were a number of Japanese soldiers watching a crowd of Koreans spearing white fish with three-pronged forks from rafts made of two bundles of reeds with a cask lashed between them, and from the bridge the ruinous state of the walls and towers could not be seen.
Whang Ju is memorable to me as being the first place I saw which had suffered from the ravages of recent war. There the Japanese came upon the Chinese, but there was no fighting at that point. Yet whatever happened has been enough to reduce a flourishing town with an estimated population of 30,000 souls to one of between 5,000 and 6,000, and to destroy whatever prosperity it had.
I passed through the Water Gate into a deplorable scene of desolation. There were heaps of ruins, some blackened by fire, others where the houses had apparently collapsed “all of a heap,” with posts and rafters sticking out of it. There are large areas of nothing but this and streets of deserted houses, sadder yet, with doors and windows gone for the bivouac fires of the Japanese, and streets where roofless mud walls alone were standing. In some parts there were houses with windows gone and torn paper waving from their walls, and then perhaps an inhabited house stood solitary among the deserted or destroyed, emphasizing the desolation. Some of the destruction was wrought by the Chinese, some by the Japanese, and much resulted from the terrified flight of more than 20,000 of the inhabitants.
North of Whang Ju are rich plains of productive, stoneless, red alluvium, extending towards the Tai-döng for nearly 40 miles. On these there were villages partly burned and partly depopulated and ruinous, and tracts of the superb soil had passed out of cultivation owing to the flight of the cultivators, and there was a total absence of beasts, the splendid bulls of the region having perished under their loads en route for Manchuria.
It was a dreary journey that day through partially destroyed villages, relapsing plains, and slopes denuded of every stick which could be burned. There were no wayfarers on the roads, no movement of any kind, and as it grew dusk the mapu were afraid of tigers and robbers, and we halted for the night at the wretched hamlet of Ko-moun Tari, where I obtained a room with delay and difficulty, partly owing to the unwillingness of the people to receive a foreigner. They had suffered enough from foreigners, truly!