COREAN BULL HARROWING.
Various kinds of timber abound, except in the west, where wood is scarce and is sparingly used; and in other parts the want of coal has caused the wasteful destruction of many a forest. The fauna is very considerable and besides tigers, leopards, and deer, includes pigs, wild cats, badgers, foxes, beavers, otters, martens, bears, and a great variety of birds. The salamander is found in the streams as in western Japan. The domestic animals are few. The cattle are excellent, the bull being the usual beast of burden, the pony very small but hardy, fowls good, the pigs inferior.
Immense numbers of oxen are found in the south, furnishing the meat diet craved by the people, who eat much more of fatty food than the Japanese. Goats are rare. Sheep are imported from China only for sacrificial purposes. The dog serves for food as well as for companionship and defense. Of birds the pheasants, falcons, eagle, crane, and stork are common.
Among the products are rice, wheat, beans, cotton, hemp, corn, sesame, and perilla. Ginseng grows wild in the Kange mountains and is also much cultivated about Kai-seng, the duties upon it, notwithstanding much smuggling, yielded about half a million dollars annually.
COREAN CITY WALL.
Iron ore of excellent quality is mined; and there are copper mines in several places. The output of the silver mines is very small, but the customs returns for 1886 show the value of gold exported that year to be $503,296. The principal industries are the manufacture of paper, mats woven of grass, split bamboo blinds, oil paper, and silk. The total value of the foreign imports in 1887 was $2,300,000, two-thirds representing cotton goods; the native exports reached about $700,000, chiefly beans and cow hides. The foreign vessels entering the treaty ports yearly number about seven hundred and fifty, of some two hundred thousand tons burden. Three-fourths of the trade is with Japan and more than one-fifth with China; British goods go by way of these countries. Until 1888 business was done chiefly by barter, imports being exchanged largely for gold dust, and Japanese silk piece goods being a current exchange for trade inland. In that year the mint at Seoul was completed, and a beneficial effect on commerce resulted from the introduction of a convenient and sufficient coinage. Seoul is connected by telegraph with Taku, Port Arthur, Chemulpo, Gensan, and Fusan.
Corea is divided into eight provinces, three on the east coast and five on the west coast. These eight provinces are divided into sixty districts with about three hundred and sixty cities, only sixty of which however are entitled to the name, the remainder distinguishing themselves from the larger hamlets and villages merely by the walled-in residence of the chief government official. Only a portion of each real city is walled in; but it must not be thought that these walls are in any way similar to those to be found in China, where even second and third rate cities are protected by high and strong fortifications with moats. Corean walls are usually about six feet high, miserably constructed, of irregular and uneven stone blocks, and nearly every one of them would tumble down at the first shock of a ball fired from a modern gun.
CHINESE PROTECTED CRUISER CHIH-YUEN.
Sunk at the Battle of the Yalu.