Mr. Underwood and I had been engaged since the early fall, and we had arranged to be married, and to start for the country on the fourteenth of March. The whole foreign community seemed to vie with each other in tokens of kindness and good will towards us on that occasion.
On the morning of the eventful day, the jingling bells of many pack-ponies was heard in our courtyard, and I soon discovered that quite a train of the little animals had arrived with the gift of her majesty. One million cash! It sounds like “Arabian Nights,” but as at that time 2,500 to 3,000 cash went to the making of the dollar, it was not, after all, more than a generous Korean queen might easily give, or a missionary easily dispose of. Their majesties arranged for several people from the palace to be present at the ceremony, the army was represented by General Han Ku Sul, a nobleman of the highest rank, and the cabinet by Min Yeng Whan, a near relative of the queen, and in highest favor with their majesties.
A number of palace women were also present, behind screens, and of course some of the native Christians. The whole foreign community gave us their good wishes, and cable messages were put in our hands just after the ceremony, from each of our respective homes in America.
Early on the morning of the 14th of March, 1889, we set out on our wedding trip.
Everything except force had been resorted to by missionaries and foreigners residing in Seoul to prevent my taking this journey. No European woman had, as yet, ever traveled in the interior of Korea, and not more than four or five men had ever ventured ten miles outside the walls, except to the port. Tigers and leopards were known to exist in the mountains; the character of the natives was not well understood by most people; contagion in the inns, the rudeness of mobs, the difficulty of obtaining good water, no means of speedy communication with Seoul, the necessity at times of long marches, were all possible dangers, but were greatly overestimated. It was freely and frequently predicted, that if I came back at all, it would be in my coffin, and my poor husband fell under the heaviest of public censure for consenting to take me. As he had made two trips and saw no difficulty, I felt I could trust his judgment, and as country work was exactly what I had longed to do, and what had been my ideal from the first, I looked forward with the greatest pleasure to a journey through a lovely country, to be filled with blessed service; it seemed to me no honeymoon so rich in delight could ever have been planned before.
It was arranged that I should go in a native chair, which consisted of a sort of box frame, high enough for me to sit in Turkish fashion; it had a roof of bamboo covered with paper oiled and painted, the sides were closed in with blue muslin, and there were little windows of stained glass on either side. A curtain in the front could be raised or buttoned down to keep out the chill or the disagreeable piercing eyes of the curious sightseers or kugungers, as they are called in Korea. My conveyance was made more comfortable by cushions beneath and behind my seat, a shawl was draped around the inside to keep out draughts, and with a hot-water bottle and foot-muff at my feet, I felt positively steeped in luxury, and quite too much babyfied for a hardy missionary.
I was carried by a couple of strong chair coolies, the poles on which the chair was placed resting in straps, which hung from the shoulders of the carriers, so that its main weight came on them, rather than on the hands, which grasped the poles. There were four bearers, two who carried, and two who, by placing a strong rod under the chair, lifted its weight from the tired shoulders, for half a minute or so, once every ten minutes. At the end of every three miles these lifting men and the others changed places, and so we easily made thirty miles or more every day, without much fatigue on the part of these hardy men, whose profession this had been for years.
I’m afraid they were a very rough set of customers, and undoubtedly got us into trouble on more than one occasion. They were full of fun and spirits, and told long and fishy yarns, to the country folks, and occasionally played off practical jokes on these simple swains, to beguile the tedium of the road. They aroused the awe and admiration of the natives in the country villages, by telling them what wonderful things we carried in our packs. There was nothing, according to them, that we could not do, or had not got. “Why, even a boat,” said they, “is in that trunk. It folds up very small, but one blows into it, and it gradually grows hard and large, and lo! a boat.” Thus was magnified our rubber bath tub. That we finished our trip with so little difficulty with such companions speaks well for the gentle good nature of the natives.
A STREET CROWD. [PAGE 35]