“What do you wish? Speak!” replied the king.
“The circumstances being such and such, I am at this moment without wife and without food. That is my condition.”
As there was in all this nothing different from the preceding, the king, struck with compassion, bestowed upon them immediately lucrative offices.
If he had not examined for himself, how could he have been able to know such unfortunate men, and procure for them so happy a position in the world? In truth, the goodness of his Majesty Cheng-chong has become celebrated. [[284]]
CHAPTER XXXII.
OUT-DOOR LIFE.—CHARACTERS AND EMPLOYMENTS.
Six public roads of the first class traverse the peninsula and centre at the capital. They are from twenty to thirty feet in width, with ditches at the side for drainage. One of these begins near the ocean, in Chulla Dō, and in general follows the shores of the Yellow Sea through three provinces to Tong-chin opposite Kang-wa Island, and enters the capital by branch roads. Another highway passes through the interior of the three provinces bordering the Yellow Sea, and enters Seoul by the southern gate. Hamel and his fellow-captives journeyed by this road. The road by which the annual embassy reaches Peking, after leaving the capital, passes through Sunto and Ping-an and Ai-chiu, crosses the Neutral Strip, and enters Manchuria for Peking by way of Mukden. This was the beaten track of the French missionaries, and the shipwrecked men from the United States and Japan, and is the military road from China. It is well described, with a good map, in Koei-Ling’s “Journal of a Mission into Corea,” which Mr. F. Scherzer has translated for us.
From Fusan and Tong-nai, in the southeast, Seoul is reached by no less than three roads. One strikes westward through Chung-chong, and joins the main road coming up from the south. Another following the Nak-tong River basin, crosses the mountains to Chulla, and enters Seoul by the south gate. Eight river crossings must be made by this road, over which Konishi marched in 1593. The third route takes a more northerly trend, follows the sea-coast to Urusan, and passing through Kion-chiu, enters the capital by the east gate.
The fifth great road issuing from the north gate of the capital passes into Kang-wen, and thence upward to Gensan, and to the frontiers at the Tumen River.