CHAPTER XLII.
THE WALLS OF ISOLATION SAPPED.
While the three priests were prosecuting their perilous labors, Thomas Tsoi, the Corean student from Macao with Maistre, a new missionary, were on their way through Manchuria to Hun-chun. Arriving after a seventeen days’ march, they were seized by Manchiu officers, reprimanded, and sent back to Mukden.
Andrew Kim, by order of Bishop Ferreol, went to Whang-hai by water, to examine into the feasibility of making that province a gateway of entrance. The sea was full of Chinese junks, the herring fishery being at its height. Watch-towers dotted the hills, and the beach was patrolled by soldiers to prevent communication with shore. Andrew, coming ostensibly to buy a cargo of fish, was enabled to sail among the islands, to locate the rocks and sandspits, and to make a chart of the coast. Deeming the route practicable, he hailed a Chinese junk, and after conference, confided to the captain the mail-bag of the mission, which contained also the charts and two maps of Corea. Unfortunately these documents were seized by the spies, and Andrew Kim, delayed while the cargo of fish was drying, was arrested on the suspicion of being a Chinaman. He was sent to Seoul, and while in prison heard of the French ships which were at that moment vainly trying to find the mouth of the Han River and the channel to the capital. Meanwhile, from his hiding-place, Ferreol wrote to Captain Cecile, who commanded the fleet of three war-vessels.
The object of this visit was to hold a conference with the king’s ministers, and demand satisfaction for the murder of Imbert Chastan and Maubant in 1839. After some coast surveys made, and the despatch of a threatening letter, the ships withdrew. Ferreol’s note arrived too late, and Andrew Kim’s fate was sealed.
While in prison, Andrew was employed in coloring, copying, and translating two English maps of the world, one of which was for the king, and composing a summary of geography. In a letter [[368]]in Latin to Ferreol, dated August 26th, he narrated his capture and trial. On September 16th, he was led out to trial. The sentence-flag bore the inscription: “Put to death for communicating with the western barbarians,” and the full programme of cruelty was carried out. Four women and four men were put to death in the persecution which followed.
Maistre and Thomas Tsoi went to Macao and there found the French frigates La Gloire and La Victorieuse, ready to sail north for an answer to Captain Cecile’s letter. Gladly welcomed by Captain Pierre, they went aboard July 12th. On August 10th, while under sail in a group of islands off Chulla, in latitude 35° 45′ and longitude 124° 8′, in water which the English charts marked at twelve fathoms deep, both vessels grounded simultaneously. The high tides for which this coast is noted falling rapidly, both vessels became total wrecks. The largest of the La Gloire’s boats was at once sent to Shanghae for assistance, and the six hundred men made their camp at Kokun Island. Kindly treated and furnished with provisions as they were, the Frenchmen during their stay were rigidly secluded, and at night cordons of boats with lanterns guarded against all communication with the mainland. Thomas Tsoi acted as dumb interpreter, with pencil, in Chinese, and though hearing every word of the Corean magistrates was not recognized. Though meeting fellow Christians, he was unable to get inland, and Ferreol’s messengers to the sea-shore arrived after an English ship from Shanghae had taken the crews away.
The Corean government, fearing[1] further visits of the outside barbarians, sent an answer to Admiral Cecile, directing it to Captain Pierre at Macao, by way of Peking.[2] They explained why they treated Frenchmen shipwrecked kindly; but sent Frenchmen disguised to execution.[3] When Admiral Cecile reached Paris in [[369]]1848, one of the periodical French revolutions had broken out in Paris, and a war at the ends of the earth was out of the question. The French government neglected to send a vessel to take away the effects saved from the wreck. The Coreans promptly put the cannon to use, and from them, as models, manufactured others for the forts built to resist “the Pepins” in 1866, and the Americans in 1871.
Once more Maistre and Thomas Tsoi essayed to enter the guarded peninsula, by sailing early in 1848 in a Chinese junk from Macao to Merin Island off Whang-hai, but no Christians met them. By way of Shanghae, they then went into Shing-king, and in December to the Border Gate, meeting couriers from Bishop Ferreol. On a fiercely cold, windy, and dark night, which drove the soldiers indoors to the more congenial pleasure of the long pipe, cards, and cup on the oven-warmed floors, Thomas Tsoi got safely through Ai-chiu, and in a few days was in Seoul, and later in Chulla. The work of propagation now took a fresh start. A number of religious works composed or translated into the vulgar tongue were printed in pamphlet form from a native printing press, and widely circulated. In 1850, the Christians numbered eleven thousand, and five young men were studying for the priesthood. Regular mails, sewn into the thick cotton coats of men in the embassy, were sent to and brought from China. A French whaler having grounded off the coast, the French consul at Shanghae, with two Englishmen, came to reclaim the vessel’s effects, and meeting three young men sent by the ever-alert Thomas Tsoi, took them back to Shanghae, the third remaining to meet his comrades on their return with fresh missionaries to come. After still another failure to enter Corea, Maistre set foot in Chulla-dō, by way of Kokun Island, even while the fire-signals were blazing on the headlands on account of the presence of Russian ships.[4] [[370]]