SENTINEL GATE AT PALACE. Frontispiece

FIFTEEN YEARS
AMONG
THE TOP-KNOTS
OR
LIFE IN KOREA
By
L. H. UNDERWOOD, M.D.
With Introduction
by
Frank F. Ellinwood, D.D., LL.D.
Second Edition
Revised and Enlarged

YOUNG PEOPLE’S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT
OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
NEW YORK

Copyright, 1904,
By American Tract Society.
Copyright, 1908,
By American Tract Society.

THIS LITTLE VOLUME
IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED TO
MY HUSBAND
IN MEMORY OF
FIFTEEN HAPPIEST YEARS

INTRODUCTION

It may be said at once, that Mrs. Underwood’s narrative of her experience of “Fifteen Years Among the Top-Knots” constitutes a book of no ordinary interest. There is no danger that any reader having even a moderate sympathy with the work of missions in the far East will be disappointed in the perusal. The writer does not undertake to give a comprehensive account of missions in Korea, or even of the one mission which she represents, but only of the things which she has seen and experienced.

There is something naive and attractive in the way in which she takes her readers into her confidence while she tells her story, as trustfully as if she were only writing to a few relatives and friends. Necessarily she deals very largely with her own work, and that of her husband, as of that she is best qualified to speak. Everywhere, however, there are generous and appreciative references to the heroic labors of associate missionaries. Nor does she confine these tributes to members of her own mission. Some of her highest encomiums are given to members of other missions, who have laboured and died for the Gospel and the cause of humanity in Korea.

Mrs. Underwood, then Miss Lillias Horton, of Chicago, went to Korea as a medical missionary in 1888. As a Secretary of the Presbyterian Board, accustomed to visit our candidates before appointment, I found her a bright young girl of slight and graceful figure in one of the Chicago hospitals, where she was adding to her medical knowledge some practical experience as a trained nurse. There was nothing of the consciousness of martyrdom in her appearance, but quite the reverse, as with cheerful countenance and manner she glided about in her white uniform among the ward patients. It was evident that she was looking forward with high satisfaction to the work to which she had consecrated her life.

The story of her arrival at Chemulpo, of her first impressions of Korea, is best told in her own words. The first arrival of a missionary on the field is always a trying experience. The squalid appearance of the low native huts, whose huddled groupings Mrs. Underwood compares to low-lying beds of mushrooms, poorly clad and dull-eyed fishermen and other peasantry, contrasting so strongly with the brighter scenes of one’s home land, are enough to fill any but the bravest with discouragement and despair. But our narrator passed this trying ordeal by reflecting that she was not a tourist in pursuit of entertainment, but an ambassador of Christ, sent to heal the bodies and enlighten the souls of the lowly and the suffering.

As a young unmarried woman and quite alone, she found a welcoming home with Dr. and Mrs. Heron, and began at once a twofold work of mastering the language, and of professional service at the hospital. Not long after her arrival she was called to pay a visit to the queen, who wished to secure her services as her physician. The relation soon grew into a mutual friendship, and Mrs. Underwood from that time till the assassination of the unfortunate queen was her frequent visitor, and in many respects her personal admirer. She does not hesitate to express her appreciation of the queen, as a woman of kind-hearted and generous impulses, high intellectual capacity, and no ordinary diplomatic ability. Of stronger mind and higher moral character than her royal husband, she was his wise counsellor and the chief bulwark of his precarious power.

Though Mrs. Underwood’s book is of the nature of a narrative, yet its smoothly running current is laden with all kinds of general information respecting the character and customs of the people, the condition of the country, the native beliefs and superstitions, the social degradation, the poverty and widespread ignorance of the masses. The account of missionary work is given naturally, its pros and cons set forth without special laudation on the one hand, or critical misgiving on the other. It is simply presented, and left to speak for itself, and it can scarcely fail to carry to all minds a conviction of the genuineness and marked success of the great work which our missionaries in Korea are conducting.

Mrs. Underwood’s marriage to Rev. H. G. Underwood, who had already been four years in the country, is related with simplicity and good sense, and the remarkable bridal tour, though given more at length, is really a story not of honeymoon experiences, but rather of arduous and heroic missionary itineration. It was contrary to the advice and against the strong remonstrances of their associates and their friends in the U. S. legation that the young couple set out in the early spring of 1889 for a pioneering tour through Northern Korea.

Fortunately for the whole work of our Protestant missions, the most favorable impression had been made upon the Korean Court and upon the people by the striking and most valuable service which had been rendered by Dr. H. N. Allen, our first medical missionary, and now U. S. Minister in Korea. He had healed the wounds of some distinguished Koreans, who had been nearly killed in a midnight conflict between the Chinese and Japanese garrisons at Seoul.

Although there were strong prohibitory decrees against the admission of foreigners in the interior, Mr. and Mrs. Underwood ventured to presume upon the connivance of the officials at their proposed journey to the far north. Traveling as missionaries and without disguise, it was a plucky undertaking for the young bride, since, so far as known, she was the first foreign woman who had made such a tour. The journey was a protracted one and involved all kinds of hardship and privation. Nothing worthy of a name of inn was to be found, but only some larger huts in which travelers were packed away amid every variety of filth and vermin.

The curiosity of the people to see a foreign woman was such that the mob everywhere scrupled not to punch holes through the paper windows and doors to get a peep. After having been borne all day in a chair, not over roads, but through tortuous bridle paths, over rocks and through sloughs, it was found well-nigh impossible to rest at night. All sorts of noises early and late added to their discomfort. As to food, the difficulty of subsisting on such fare as the people could furnish may be well imagined. They were not wholly free from the fear of wild animals, for some districts through which they passed were infested by tigers and leopards. But their greatest danger was that of falling into the hands of roaming bands of robbers. Mrs. Underwood’s account of one experience of this kind will be read with thrilling interest.

Fortunately, Mr. Underwood had already made one or two shorter tours through the country alone, and had baptized a few converts here and there. The passports also which he carried with him secured the favor of some of the district magistrates, so that the two were not exposed wholly to hostile influences.

It is impossible in few words to do justice to the story related in this interesting book, which was prepared by Mrs. Underwood at the request of the American Tract Society, or do anything more than commend in general terms its various presentations. One of these relating to the experiences of a severe cholera season, during which missionaries, not only medical but also clerical, remained faithfully at their posts, unmindful of the personal risks and of the heat, filth and discomfort of an unsanitary city in the most sickly months, in order to do all in their power to save the lives and mitigate the sufferings of the poor and despairing people. The account is given with great simplicity, and without ostentatious claims of heroism, and may be regarded as a true representation of the faithful service often rendered by our missionaries in times of trial and great suffering.

Mrs. Underwood’s book will be read with peculiar interest at this time, when all attention is turned to the far East and especially to Korea, which seems likely to be the battleground in the war between Russia and Japan. The position of the poor Koreans, government and people, is calculated to elicit the sympathy of all Christians and all philanthropists. Every one wonders what will be the outcome for poor Korea. It is indeed a time for earnest prayer that the God of nations will overrule all current events for the best good of this beleaguered people and for the advancement of Christ’s Kingdom.

F. F. Ellinwood.

New York, Feb. 20, 1904.

PREFACE

The chapters which are here given to the public are simply reminiscent, a brief story of a few years of the writer’s life in one of the most unique and interesting of all the Eastern countries, among a people who are singularly winning and lovable.

I beg that in reading these pages it may be remembered that this book makes no pretense whatever to being a text or reference book on Korea, or in any respect a history of Korean missions. The writer has simply strung together a few events which have fallen under her own personal observation during the last fifteen years. If more frequent reference is made to the work carried on by my husband and myself than to others, it is simply because it is only with regard to that which has been woven into the web of my own experience that I can speak with exactness and authority. All it is hoped to accomplish is, that sufficient insight into the customs and character of the people, and their moral and political atmosphere, with the results, opportunities and possible limitations of mission work, may be given to induce the reader to study further, and perchance to question what his relation to it all is.

I must acknowledge my great indebtedness to Dr. H. N. Allen’s chronological index, by which I have been able to verify many dates.

I am also indebted to the “Korean Repository,” and to the “Life of Dr. James Hall,” for part of the story of the events connected with his work in Pyeng Yang, both before and after the war, and for the official report of the trial of the queen’s murderers at Hiroshima. More than all, I am obliged to my husband, by whose assistance I have obtained from Koreans the particulars relating to the Emeute of 1884, the Tonghaks, the Pusaings, the Independents, and the Romanists. He has also given me many of the anecdotes of native Christian life, and as we lived it all out ourselves, this volume is as much his as mine.

Lillias H. Underwood.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CITY OF SEOUL. [PAGE 3]

FIFTEEN YEARS AMONG THE TOP-KNOTS

CHAPTER I

First Arrival—First Impressions—The City of Seoul—Korean Houses—Mission Homes—Personnel of Mission in 1888—Beginnings of Work—Difficulties in Attaining the Language—Korean Religions—Palace Women—First Interview with Palace Women—Entertainment Given in my Honor by President of Foreign Office—The Interdict—Confidence Exhibited by Government in Protestant Missionaries—The “Baby Riots”—Babies Reported to have been Eaten at Foreign Legations—Restoring Confidence—The Signal—First Invitation to Palace.

I landed in Korea at the port of Chemulpo on a cloudy, windy March day, in 1888. My eyes fell on a rocky shore, back of which the bare sharp outline of low hills, whitened with patches of snow, was relieved by no trees to break the monotony of the scene. Dreary mud flats, instead of a sandy beach, lay reeking and slimy along the water’s edge. As our boat neared the shore, for there was and is no pier, and ships even at high tide cannot approach very near, wild and strange-looking men, uttering wild and strange-sounding speech, came hurrying down the hill to inspect us.

Their coarse black hair was long and dishevelled, in some instances braided in a single pigtail, in most cases, however, tied on top of the head, where a careless attempt at a top-knot had been made, but elf-locks straying round the neck and face gave a wolfish and unkempt appearance. They were Mongolians with all the race features, not differing much from Chinese or Japanese except in dress, and being in the main rather taller than the latter people. Their garments appeared to consist of a short loose jacket and long baggy trousers, of a dirty white native cloth. These garments among the poorer classes are never changed oftener than twice in a month.

These were the people among whom I had come to work—this the country which I had chosen instead of the “groves and templed hills” of my own dear native land. My heart swelled, and lifted up an earnest prayer that it might not be in vain.

In justice to the Koreans, however, I ought to say here, that the people whom I saw that morning were of the lowest and roughest class, their dress the poorest sort, and that Chemulpo, especially in March, is perhaps the most forbidding and unsightly place in Korea. Being the main port for the capital, it is made up, as ports often are, very largely of a mixture of various nationalities. Many sailors and traders, and especially Chinese and Japanese merchants, have built their poor houses and shops in the main town.

The trip from Chemulpo to Seoul, about twenty-eight miles, was made the following day, in a Sedan-chair carried by four coolies. The road, although a much traveled one, was very bad, but is now replaced by a railroad which accomplishes the distance in about two hours and a half. The country I found pleasantly rolling—comparatively few trees were seen, and the population thereabout seemed quite sparse. Here and there were squalid mud huts thatched with straw. I found on inquiry that this little land, lying west of Japan, attached at its northern extremity to China and Siberia, has an area of about ninety thousand square miles and a population of over fourteen millions of people, with a climate varying from that in the north, like northern New York, to that in the extreme south, like southern Virginia.

We approached Seoul about four o’clock in the afternoon, and I was thrilled at the sight of the first walled town I had ever beheld. The walls are very picturesque—built of great blocks of stone—hung with ivy, and give an impression of great age.

At the time of my arrival, and for some few years after, a very interesting custom was in vogue with regard to the closing of these gates. Korea had for centuries a signal fire service, by which news of peace or war was with telegraphic rapidity conveyed to Seoul, and by number, frequency of repetition and other expedients a tolerably useful code had been established. On the south mountain, within the walls, were four beacons, one for each point of the compass, to which these lines converged. Every evening as soon as the sun had set, when the bright glow of these four beacon fires published the fact that all was well in his majesty’s dominions, four officials, whose business it was to report to the king the message of the fires, presented themselves at the palace, and with low obeisance, each announced that all was well in the north—in the south—the east—and the west. On this, the palace band struck up its gayest airs, and when this music was heard, the signal was given for the tolling of the great curfew bell in the center of the city. When the extremely sweet and solemn, low and yet penetrating tones of this bell were heard, the ponderous gates were swung to and barred, not to be reopened till the ringing of the same bell at the first streak of dawn gave the signal to the keepers.

Entering through these gates, fortunately not yet closed, we saw narrow, filthy streets, flanked by low mud houses, either thatched with straw, or tiled. It has been aptly said that the city looks like a vast bed of mushrooms, since none of the Korean houses are built more than one story high.

The common people are very poor and their homes seem to an American wretchedly poor and comfortless, and yet, compared with the most destitute of London or New York, there are few who go cold or hungry in Seoul. Each dwelling is so arranged that the part of the house occupied by the women, which is called the anpang, or inner room, shall be screened from sight from the street and from those entering the gate—for every house has at least a tiny courtyard, part of which is also screened off (either by another wall, or by mats, or trees and bushes) for the women’s use.

Many of the homes of the poor consist of but one room, with a sort of outer shed, which is used as kitchen. Such a place often has no window, or at most only a tiny one, and both window and door are covered with white paper instead of glass. These doors are usually very low and narrow, so that even a small woman must stoop to enter, and within it is not always possible to stand upright except in the center, where the roof is highest. These small rooms are easily heated by means of a system of flues built under the floor, which consists of stone and mud. A fire of brush and twigs is kindled under one side of the house, and as the chimney opens at the other side, the draft naturally carries smoke and heat through the flues, the floor becomes very hot, and the whole room is quickly warmed. The fireplace is built in with pots for boiling the rice—so that a great advantage is obtained in the matter of economy, the one fire booth cooks and warms. Wherever it can be afforded, a sarang, or men’s sitting room, which opens directly on the street or road, or upon the men’s court, is part of the establishment. Here any man may enter; male guests are entertained, and fed, and here they sleep. No men not members of the family or relatives ever enter the anpang.

It is needless to say that everything in connection with these houses is fearfully unsanitary, and many of them are filthy and full of vermin. All sewage flows out into the unspeakable ditches on either side of the street. Of late years efforts have been made to alter this state of things, better streets have been laid, and the open sewers, which have existed for many years, are sluiced out by the summer rains, which are the salvation of the city.

It was a great and delightful surprise when suddenly, entering a gate in a mud wall, we left behind us these dirty streets and saw around us a lovely lawn, flower beds, bushes and trees, and a pretty picturesque mission home. It was like magic. I found our mission in possession of native houses which had been occupied in past years by wealthy but now ruined or banished noblemen. They had been purchased at a ridiculously low price in a condition of dilapidation, repaired at little expense and the interiors more or less Europeanized. The one which I entered had, with great good taste, been left without other ceiling than its quaint and massive beams and rafters of blackened wood, the walls were prettily papered, and rugs and comfortable furniture and a few pictures and ornaments gave a homelike air. The rooms were spacious, and having been the dwelling of the rich, they were not so low or dark as those I have just described.

Our mission, which at that time had been established about four years, was high in favor with the government. Dr. Allen first, and later Dr. Heron, were the official physicians to the king, who had established a government hospital, over which he had placed them in charge. Miss Ellers, lately married, had been appointed medical adviser to the queen and had been placed in charge of the women’s department of the hospital, both of which positions she had resigned after her marriage, and to both of which I had been appointed to succeed. The members of the mission whom I found were Dr. and Mrs. Heron, Rev. H. G. Underwood and Mrs. Bunker (formerly Miss Ellers). Dr. and Mrs. Allen had returned to America on an official mission.

Work had been well started, the hospital was daily crowded with patients, in addition to which Dr. Heron had a large foreign and native practice, as well as a hospital school for the instruction of future drug clerks and medical students. Mr. Underwood had established an orphan boys’ home and school, had assisted Dr. Allen in his clinics till the arrival of Dr. Heron, and was at that time, in addition to the entire care of the orphanage, teaching in the government hospital school, which it was hoped might be the stepping stone to a medical school. He was holding regular religious services, and about thirty had been baptized. He had made a long trip into the interior, up to the northern borders, selling tracts and preaching everywhere. Language helps were in preparation, and the Gospel of Mark in a tentative form had been translated. Miss Ellers was in charge of women’s medical work up to my arrival, and was high in favor with the queen, who had bestowed rank upon her, and many costly presents. She had also begun to work and train the first member of the girls’ school.

I found that help was much needed on all sides. The day after my arrival saw me installed at the hospital with an interpreter at my side. Here work usually lasted about three hours. My home was with Dr. and Mrs. Heron, who with warmest kindness had fitted up a sunny room for me. Here Dr. Heron and I had a joint dispensary, and here I was besieged at all hours by women desiring medical attention. I soon found that language study was continually interrupted very seriously by these applicants, who respected not times or seasons. I was of course called upon to visit patients in their homes, one of whom, the wife of the Chinese minister of state, Prince Uan (now a very prominent personage in Chinese matters), must be seen every day with an amount of ceremony which took not a little of my precious time. However, finding that others were being overworked, I consented to give two hours each day to teaching the little orphans arithmetic and English.

Of course we made slow progress, and floundered not a little when the teacher knew no Korean, and the pupils no English. This institution had the unqualified favor of the king, and except the hospital was the first institution in Korea which illustrated the loving-kindness of the Lord. We hoped it might become a successful school, where souls might be saved, ere they had been steeped for years in vice, and the first steps taken in the preparation of evangelists and preachers. Our duty and chief desire was of course to acquire the language, but this was much interrupted by this other work. As we stood there, such a little company among these dying millions, we could not realize that hours of preparation then meant doubled usefulness in years to come, and so time and energy, that should have been spent mainly in study, were poured out in hospital, dispensary and schools.

The new missionaries of these later days are put in a language incubator as soon as they arrive and kept there till they emerge full-fledged linguists, who have passed three searching examinations by the language committee of the missions. Then we sat down with an English-Chinese dictionary (most scholarly Koreans know a little Chinese), a Korean-French dictionary, a French grammar and a Korean reader with a small English primer on Korean, the Gospel of Mark and a Korean catechism for text books. We were presented to a Korean gentleman knowing not one syllable of English, or the first principles of the constructions of any language on earth, or even the parts of speech, and without the glimmering of an idea as to the best methods or any method of teaching, who yet was called, probably ironically, “a teacher,” from whom we were expected to pump with all diligence such information on the language as he was able to bestow. With scanty knowledge of French, more than rusty from long disuse, I labored and floundered, trying now this plan, now that, with continual interruptions and discouragements.

Before I could more than stammer a few sentences I was called upon to begin religious teaching, so undertook a Sunday school service with the little boys, using a catechism which I could not yet translate, but (knowing the sounds) could hear the boys recite. Soon after I began holding a Bible class with a few women, with the aid of a little native boy who had learned English and a former sorceress who could read the Chinese Scriptures. This woman would read the chapter, we all united in the Lord’s prayer and in singing the few hymns then translated, and I talked to the women through the medium of my little interpreter. I struggled and stumbled. The women were patient and polite, but to our Father it must have looked the spoiled tangled patchwork of the child who wished to help, with ignorant, untaught hands, and made a loving botch of it all.

Perhaps right here a few words about the Korean religions may be in place. Confucianism, Buddhism and Taouism all hold a sort of sway over the natives, and yet all have lost, to a great extent, the influence they once had. The majority have very little faith in any religion. Confucianism, otherwise a mere philosophical system of morals, has the strongest hold upon the people in the laws it enjoins for ancestor worship. This custom, enforced by the strongest and most widespread superstitions in the minds of the Koreans, binds them with fetters stronger than iron. If ancestors are not worshiped with most punctilious regard to every smallest detail of the law, dire calamities will befall, from the wrath of irate and neglected spirits. The servitude thus compelled is hard and wearisome, but not one jot or tittle must be omitted, and woe to the wretch who, embracing another doctrine, fails to perform these rites. He or she is looked upon as more than a traitor to home and friends, false to the most sacred obligations. Buddhism has fallen low, until very lately its priests were forbidden to enter the capital, and they rank next to the slayer of cattle, the lowest in the land.

A few Buddhist temples are maintained at government expense or by endowment, and women and children, and all the more ignorant, still worship and believe, to some extent. The same classes also worship and fear an infinite number of all sorts of evil deities—gods or demons, who infest earth, air and sea, gods of various diseases, and all trades; these in common with Satan himself must be propitiated with prayers and sacrifices, beating of drums, ringing of bells and other ceremonials too numerous to mention.

Over all other objects of worship, they believe, is the great Heavens, the personification of the visible heavens, who, as nearly as I can discover, is identical with the Baal referred to in the Old Testament; but everywhere their faith waxes more and more feeble in these old worn-out superstitions. In many cases only respect for ancient customs and public opinion keeps them even in appearance to the outward forms of worship. They are as sheep without a shepherd, lost in the wilderness, “faint and hungry, and ready to die,” and so when the gospel comes, it finds many weary souls, ready to take Christ’s yoke upon them and find his rest.

And yet how hopeless looked the task we had before us in those days, a little company of scarce a dozen people, including our Methodist brethren, many of us able to stammer only a few words of the language as yet, attempting to introduce Christianity into a nation of fourteen or more millions of people, in the place of their long established religions; and beginning with a few poor farmers and old women. But the elements of success, the certainty of victory, lay in the divine nature of the religion, and in the Almighty God who sent us with it. This knowledge inspired us and this alone.

A few days after my arrival in Seoul a messenger came from the queen, to bid me welcome, and inquire if I had had a pleasant journey, and shortly after Mrs. Heron asked some of the queen’s attendants to meet me at luncheon. These women are not, as in other courts, ladies of high rank, for such could never, under Korean customs, endure the publicity of the palace, but are taken as children and young girls from the middle and lower classes, and entirely separated from all others, to the service of their majesties. They usually hold no rank, and are treated with respect, only on account of their relations to the royal family. They wear on all state occasions immense quantities of false hair, which gives them a peculiarly grotesque appearance; are much powdered and perfumed, with pencilled and shaven eyebrows; wear long flowing silken robes, gilded ornaments in their hair and at their waists; and present the sad spectacle of women whose very decorations seem only to add to and emphasize their painful uncomeliness.

MAIN ENTRANCE TO PALACE. [PAGE 20]

Korean women as a rule are not beautiful. I, who love them as much as any one ever did, who look upon them as my own sisters, must confess this. Sorrow, hopelessness, hard labor, sickness, lovelessness, ignorance, often, too often, shame, have dulled their eyes, and hardened and scarred their faces, so that one looks in vain for a semblance of beauty among women over twenty-five years of age. Among the little maids and young wives (saixies), who do not yet show the effects of the heavy hand of care and toil, one often finds a sweet bright gentle face that is pretty, winning, and very rarely even beautiful. But these poor palace women come not under that class; hardened, coarse and vulgar, their appearance only calls forth compassion. I found to my surprise that they were all smokers, and they were equally surprised that I would not accept their invitation to join them in this indulgence. They examined my dress and belongings with childish curiosity, and deluged me with questions as to my age, why I had never married, whether I had children, and why not, and other things equally impertinent and hard to answer; but were after all good natured, friendly and well meaning.

This was my first introduction to Korean officialdom, and following this within a very short time came another, in the form of a luncheon and acrobatic entertainment given for me by the President of the Foreign Office, Kim Yun Sik. This invitation came for the following Sunday—and troubled me, because I was afraid the official (who was quite ignorant of our customs and was offering me a flattering evidence of courtesy and good will) would be hurt by my refusal to accept an invitation for that day, and would very likely misunderstand it. However, there was nothing else to be done, and with suitable explanations, I announced my extreme regret at being obliged to refuse his kindness.

With great good feeling, he then changed the day, and I was given carte blanche to invite my friends, and of course asked the ladies of the Methodist mission, as well as our own. Several Korean gentlemen of high rank, including those in connection with the hospital, and others, had also been invited by my host. The table, for in deference to our foreign custom, one long table, instead of a number of small ones, had been arranged—was piled high with Korean dainties. Chicken, pheasant and other cold meats, fish, eggs, nuts and fruits prepared in many fanciful ways, Chinese preserved fruits and candies, a gutta-percha-like delicacy called “dock,” made of rice and oil pounded well together, an alcoholic native beverage called sül, and champagne and cigars. It is needless to say that we Americans did not partake of these latter additions to the menu. A vast crowd from the streets poured into the large courtyard, to see the acrobats, who were a strolling band hired for the occasion. Their performance consisted chiefly in tight-rope walking and tumbling, and was in no way remarkable. It lasted, however, nearly three hours, during all of which time we listened to the monotonous whining of the Korean band, more like a Scotch bagpipe (dear cousins, forgive) than anything else I know of; and learned the Korean verb “anchera” (sit down), which I heard that day repeated a thousand times, in all its moods, tenses and case endings, in tones of exasperation to the irrepressible Korean boy, who would stand up to see, just for all the world like some boys of whiter skin, nearer home.

Just before this, Mr. Underwood and Mr. Appenzeller had started on a long itinerating trip toward the north, the second Mr. Underwood had undertaken. While they were absent the wrath of the Korean king and cabinet against the Romanists reached the boiling point, and culminated in a decree forbidding the further teaching of foreign religions in the ports. The country was not open to us (as it is not to-day, except by special passports). The Romanists, with their well-known love of chief seats and high places, failing to profit by their former experiences of trouble from similar causes in China, insisted upon choosing as the site for their future cathedral one of the highest points in the city, overlooking the palace, and adjoining the temple holding royal ancestral tablets. The property had been obtained unknown to the king, through the medium of Korean agents, and though he used his utmost endeavors, both with the priests and with the French legation, to induce them to change this for any other site, they remained obdurate, utterly refused to yield, and proceeded to lay the foundation of their church. The decree immediately followed, and the American minister advised, nay ordered, us to recall our missionaries, who most unwillingly returned. There were, indeed, those who asserted that this early attempt to carry the Gospel into the interior had been, at least in part, the cause of the obnoxious decree, which made it look as if our work was, for a time at least, at an end. That this was not so was proved by the fact that Mr. Underwood had hardly returned ere he was waited upon by a committee consisting of high Korean nobles and members of the cabinet, offering him the entire charge of their government school, with a generous salary, and with the full understanding that he would not hesitate to teach Christianity to the pupils.

This offer, displaying the great confidence, instead of the displeasure and suspicion which foreigners assured us was the feeling of the Koreans toward our evangelistic workers, was taken into serious consideration, but was finally refused on account of its interference with other work, and for other reasons equally important.

It remained to us all to decide upon our course of conduct with regard to the prohibitory decree. Some of our number—the majority—argued, that as it was the law of the land, nothing remained for Christian law-abiding people but to obey it, to stop holding even morning prayers in our schools, to hold no religious services with Koreans, but to wait and pray, until God should move the king’s heart, and have the decree rescinded. By this course they believed we should win favor with the authorities, while defiance or disobedience might cause our whole mission to be expelled from the country.

A small minority, however, Mr. Appenzeller, now with the Lord, his wife, Mr. Underwood and myself, held that the decree had never been issued against us or our work, and that even if it had, we were under higher orders than that of a Korean king. Our duty was to preach and take the consequences, resting for authority on the word of God, spoken through Peter, in Acts, 4:19, to the rulers who forbade the apostles to preach, “Whether it be right in the sight of God, to hearken unto you, more than unto God, judge ye, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” Others might stop, as they did, with sorrow, conscientiously believing that to be the best course; we continued to teach and preach, in public and private, singing hymns, which could be heard far and near, in the little meeting-house. No attempt was ever made in any way to hinder us. Christians and other attendants on services came and went unmolested. Christianity has grown much since then, and is acknowledged as a factor in the politics of more than one province. No one ever thinks now of disguising or in any way concealing our work, yet that law has never to this day been rescinded. This is exactly in accord with Eastern customs. Laws become a dead letter, and pass into disuse; they are not often annulled.

Another event of interest, which occurred during these first months after my arrival in Korea, was the excitement culminating in what were called “the baby riots.” Similar troubles in Tientsin, China, had some years previously resulted in the massacre of a number of foreigners, including Jesuit priests, nuns and two or three French officials.

Some person or persons, with malicious intent, started a rumor which spread like wild-fire, that foreigners were paying wicked Koreans to steal native children, in order to cut out their hearts and eyes, to be used for medicine. This crime was imputed chiefly to the Japanese, and it was supposed the story had been originated by Chinese or others especially inimical to the large numbers of Japanese residents in the capital. Mr. Underwood acquainted the Japanese minister with the rumors, in order that he might protect himself and his people; which he promptly did by issuing, and causing to be issued by the government, proclamations entirely clearing his countrymen of all blame in the matter, which it was left to be understood was an acknowledged fact, and consequently the work of other “vile foreigners,” namely, ourselves and the Europeans. The excitement and fury grew hourly. Large crowds of angry people congregated, scowling, muttering, and threatening. Koreans carrying their own children were attacked, beaten, and even killed, on the supposition that they were kidnapping the children of others; and a high Korean official, who tried to protect one of these men, was pulled from his chair, and narrowly escaped with his life, although he was surrounded by a crowd of retainers and servants. It was considered unsafe for foreigners to be seen in the street. Marines were called up from Chemulpo to guard the different legations, and some Americans even packed away their most necessary clothing and valuables, preparatory to fleeing to the port. The wildest stories were told. Babies, it was said, had been eaten at the German, English, and American legations, and the hospital, of course, was considered by all the headquarters of this bloodthirsty work, for there, where medicine was manufactured and diseases treated, the babies must certainly be butchered.

One day, when returning from my clinic, my chair was surrounded by rough-looking men, who told my bearers that they should all be killed if they carried me to the hospital again; and such was the terror inspired, that these men positively refused to take me thither the following day. So I rode on horseback through the city to the hospital, Mr. Underwood, who also had duties at the hospital school, acting as my escort. We went and returned quite unmolested, and it has been my experience then and later, that a bold front and appearance of fearlessness and unconcern in moments of danger impress Asiatics, and act as a great safeguard for the foreigner.

In the meanwhile, however, the European foreign representatives had awakened to the fact that a very real danger threatened our little community, and might ripen at any moment into destruction. Proclamations from the Foreign Office were posted everywhere, but the earliest of these were mistakenly worded, leaving the impression still that possibly some “vile foreigner” had instituted these awful deeds, and that should he be discovered sore punishment would follow. At last, however, a notice appeared, written at the dictation of these same “vile foreigners,” in which it was positively stated that not only had no such thing been done by any foreigners, but that should any one be caught uttering these slanders, he would be at once arrested, and unless able to prove the truth of his tales, be punished with death. Detectives and police officers were scattered everywhere through the city, people were forbidden to stand in groups of twos and threes, a few arrests were made, and the riots were at an end.

KOREAN OFFICIAL IN CHAIR. [PAGE 16]

Before calm was restored, however, we had some uncertain, not to say uneasy, hours. On the evening of the day when the excitement had been at its highest, we received word from the American legation that should there be evidence that the mob were intending to attack our homes, a gun would be fired in the legation grounds as a signal, and we were then to hasten thither for mutual safety and defense.

It was a calm starlit July night. We sat in the little porch leading into our compound, enjoying the cool evening air, when suddenly a terrific illumination of blazing buildings lit up the horizon, and a fearful hubbub of a shouting, yelling mob assailed our ears. With beating hearts we watched and listened. Some one said Korean mobs always began by burning houses, and while we waited, wondering what it all meant, the air was rent by the sharp, quick report of a gun from the American legation.

This seemed to leave no doubt as to the real state of affairs, and Mr. Underwood and Mr. Hulbert at once repaired to the legation to make sure that there was no mistake, but soon returned, with the welcome news, that the firing of the gun had been accidental. The burning buildings also proved to have been only a coincidence, and the noise nothing more than common with a Korean crowd round a fire. In a way that still seems to be miraculous, the raging of the heathen was quieted, God was round about us, the danger that looked inevitable passed away, and all was calm.

Not long after this came the first request from the palace for me to attend on the queen, to which I responded not without some anxiety, lest through some unlooked-for occurrence some misstep on my part, the work of our mission so auspiciously begun should be hindered or stopped. As yet somewhat uncertain of our foothold, ignorant to a large extent of the people with whom we had to deal, we trembled lest some inadvertence might close the door, only so lately and unwillingly opened. I had been told I must always go in full court dress, but when I came to open the boxes, which contained the gowns prepared for this purpose, I found that both had been ruined in crossing the Pacific and could not be worn. Alas! how inauspicious to be obliged to appear before royalty in unsuitable attire, which might be attributed to disrespect! But a far more serious trouble than this weighed upon my mind as my chair coolies jogged me along the winding streets and alleys to the palace grounds. I had been strictly warned not to say anything to the queen on the subject of religion. “We are only here on sufferance,” it was urged, “and even though our teaching the common people may be overlooked and winked at, if it is brought before the authorities so openly and boldly, as it would be to introduce it into the palace, even our warmest friends might feel obliged to utterly forbid further access to the royal family, if not to banish us altogether from the country.” “Wait,” it was said, “until our footing is more assured; do not risk all through impatience.”

I saw the logic of these words, though my heart talked hotly in a very different way; but I went to the palace with my mouth sealed on the one subject I had come to proclaim.

CHAPTER II

The Palaces—The Stone Dogs—The Fire God’s Defeat—The Summer Pleasure House—Royal Reception Hall—Court Dress of Noblemen—First Impression of the King—Appearance of the Queen—The Queen’s Troubles—The Queen’s Coup d’état—The Verb Endings—The Queen’s Generosity—Stone Fight—Gifts—The Quaga—Poukhan—Its Impregnability—Picturesque Surroundings of Seoul—Pioneer Work—Progress of Work—The Queen’s Wedding Gift—Our Wedding—Opposition to my Going to the Interior—My Chair—The Chair Coolies.

The palaces, of which there were at that time three, and are now four, within the city walls, consist of several groups of one-story bungalow buildings, within large grounds or parks, which are surrounded by fine stone walls, twelve or fifteen feet high, of considerable thickness. Within these in closures were barracks for soldiers, and quarters for under-officials and servants. A special group of houses stood separated from the others for women’s apartments, and here might be seen the aged and rather infirm dowager queen, who died about a year after my arrival. The main gates in the walls of the palace I was about to visit are three, facing on the great main thoroughfare of the city. The central one, larger than the others, was used only for royalty; even ministers of foreign states are expected to enter by one of the two smaller ones on either side.

The fact that on one occasion the central gate had by special royal order been thrown open for the American minister is an illustration of the kindness and favor always shown to our representatives. These entrances are approached by broad, stone steps and a platform with handsome, carved stone balustrade, which is surmounted as well as the lofty gates by crudely chiseled stone images of various mythological animals. Some ten or more paces in front of these steps, and on either side, are the great stone dogs, so called for want of a better name, for they no more resemble dogs than lions. The story of their origin is as follows: The fire god, it was said, had a special enmity against this palace, and repeatedly burned it down; various efforts had been made to propitiate or intimidate him with little success; at length an expensive dragon was brought from China and placed in a moat in the grounds. While he lived all was well, but one ill-fated day an enemy poisoned this faithful guardian, and that night the palace was again burned. Finally some fertile brain devised these animals, no poison could affect their stony digestion, no fear or cajoling could impress their hard hearts; so there they stand on their tall pedestals—fierce and uncompromising, facing the quarter whence the fire god comes, always on guard, never sleeping in their faithful watch, and, as might be expected, he has never been able to burn the buildings thus protected.

KOREAN STONE DOG IN FRONT OF PALACE GATES. [PAGE 21]

I was conducted, however, through neither of these three main gates, but as a very strict rule was then in existence that no chair coolies should be allowed within the palace walls, my chair was carried to a small gate, much nearer the royal apartments, so that we should not be obliged to walk so far. Mrs. Bunker and Dr. Heron accompanied me, and we were met by gentlemanly Korean officials, and taken to a little waiting room, furnished with European chairs, and a table, upon which were little cakes, cigars and champagne, all of which were offered to us ladies, though after a better acquaintance with us, tea was substituted in place of the tobacco and wine. It would take far too long to describe all that engaged my eager interest as we walked through the palace grounds. A beautiful and interesting summer pleasure house—perhaps one of the most unique and remarkable in the world—stands in the center of a large lotus pond. It has an upper story and roof supported on forty-eight monoliths, the outer row being about four feet square at the base; the inner columns are rounded, of about the same diameter, and sixteen or eighteen feet high; the upper story is of wood, elaborately carved, and brightly decorated; most of these buildings are covered with a beautiful green glazed tile, peculiar to royal edifices.

There were many other interesting buildings, among which the royal reception hall was probably the finest. We saw a great number of officials, eunuchs, chusas, noblemen and soldiers, each kind and grade wearing a different attire from all the others.

The dress of the common soldiers was intended to be an imitation of European military costume adapted to the ideas of the Koreans. The result was a hybrid which had neither the dignity nor the usefulness of the one or the other. It consisted of a loose blouse jacket, and badly fitting, baggy trousers, made of thin black cotton cloth, with scarlet trimmings. The jacket was belted in, and a black felt hat surmounted the top-knot, and was fastened insecurely beneath the chin by a narrow band. This unbecoming uniform has now been changed, and the Emperor’s soldiers are as well dressed as those of any European nation.

Korean noblemen when in attendance at the palace wear a dark blue coat, with a belt which is far too large and forms a sort of hoop in front of the person. An embroidered breastplate is worn over the chest, representing a stork for civil office and a tiger for military rank. The head-dress is a kind of hat woven of horsehair, with wings at either side, curved forward, as it were in order to catch every word uttered by royalty. Nobles and officials wear on the hat band, just back of the ears, buttons of various styles made of gold or jade, which indicate the degree of the wearer’s rank.

When the royal family were ready to see us, Mrs. Bunker and I were conducted through the grounds a short distance, passed through several gateways, and at length stood at the entrance of an anteroom half filled with nobles, eunuchs and palace women, beyond which, in a very small inner room, were the king and queen, and their son, a youth about sixteen years of age. We passed forward to the audience-room, bowing frequently and very low to the smiling party of three who awaited us.

Never before had I, an American—a descendant of colonial ancestors who had cast off the shackles of tyranny—bowed so low. Never had I thought to feel as I felt when first entering the presence of a real live king and queen. The royal family had most graciously risen to greet us, and at once invited us to be seated. At that time, at least, Korean nobles never entered the royal presence without prostrating themselves to the ground, and such a piece of presumption as sitting was never dreamed of; so we refused the offered chairs, having been especially warned that not to do so might awaken jealousy and make enemies to the cause of Christianity. The point, however, was insisted upon to such an extent that we could no longer with politeness refuse, and so we found ourselves sitting face to face in a chatty sort of way, in a little eight by ten room, with the king and queen of Korea. The king impressed me at that and every subsequent meeting as a fine-looking genial gentleman. He was attired in a long touramachi, or coat of rich red silk (the royal color), with a cap or head-dress like those worn by the noblemen, except that the wings turned back rather than forward like theirs.

The queen, of course, excited my deepest interest. Slightly pale and quite thin, with somewhat sharp features and brilliant piercing eyes, she did not strike me at first sight as being beautiful, but no one could help reading force, intellect and strength of character in that face, and as she became engaged in conversation, vivacity, naïveté, wit, all brightened her countenance, and gave it a wonderful charm, far greater than mere physical beauty; and I have seen the queen of Korea when she looked positively beautiful.

She possessed mental qualities of a high order, as I soon learned, and although, like all Asiatics, her learning consisted chiefly in the Chinese classics, she possessed a very intelligent idea of the great nations of the world and their governments, for she asked many questions, and remembered what she heard. She was a subtle and able diplomatist and usually outwitted her keenest opponents; she was, moreover, a sovereign of broad and progressive policy, patriotic, and devoted to the best interests of her country and sought the good of the people to a much larger extent than would be expected of an Oriental queen. In addition, she possessed a warm heart, a tender love for little children, a delicacy and consideration in her relations, at least with us missionaries, which would have done honor to any European lady of high rank. The queen, though a Korean who had never seen the society of a foreign court, was a perfect lady. It was with surprise that I learned that as much difference exists in Korea between the people of high birth and breeding and the common coolie as is found between the European gentleman and the day laborer. Their majesties kindly inquired about my trip to Korea, my present comfort, and my friends and family in America, showing the kindest interest in what concerned me most. The conversation was carried on through an interpreter, who stood behind a tall screen, his body bent nearly double in reverence, never raising his eyes.

THE KING OF KOREA. [PAGE 23]

I learned later that Korean doctors, always men, who had treated the queen, felt (?) her pulse by using a cord, one end of which was fastened about her wrist, and the other carried into the next room was held in the doctor’s fingers. The royal tongue, I was told, was protruded through a slit in a screen for the physician’s observation. I found the queen’s trouble nothing more serious than a small furuncle which needed lancing; but as the mere suggestion of approaching her sacred person with any sort of surgical instrument was looked upon with unspeakable horror and indignation by all who surrounded her, and was flatly forbidden by the king, patience and slower measures were necessarily resorted to.

It was hardly to be wondered at that all the queen’s friends were so over-cautious and fearful for her safety. She had suffered long and malignant persecution at the hands of a cruel father-in-law, whose wicked ambitious schemes and greed of power she had balked, and nothing that a fertile brain and hate combined with wealth and influence could contrive was left undone to bring about the ruin of this unhappy lady. Slander, assassins, insurrection, fire, conspiracy with hostile nations—were all resorted to; many and thrilling were her hairbreadth escapes. Once disguised and carried on the back of a faithful retainer, she was taken from one end of the city to the other, and once in a common native woman’s chair she was borne to a place of concealment and safety. Nearly her whole immediate family were destroyed at one fell blow, by means of an infernal machine cunningly devised, sent as a present of great value from a supposed hermit, to be opened only in the presence of every member of the family. Through some fortunate circumstance the queen was detained away, but all present were instantly killed and horribly mutilated. To understand the reason for this ferocious enmity, one needs to know a little of the royal history.

The present king was the adopted son of a former childless king. His widow appointed the present king’s father to act as regent until the majority of his son. The older man was greedy of power, keen and crafty, and not inclined to hand over the reins of government; he therefore selected a wife for his son from a family of his near friends, choosing a woman he supposed he could easily control; but he was mistaken in her character and gifts. Years slipped by and time had long been over-ripe for the king to assume the government, and yet the “Tai-won-kun” gave no sign of relinquishing his clutch upon the reins of power; but the king, gentle and submissive to his father, as all Koreans are taught to be, was unwilling to force a resignation. One morning, however, through a coup d’état of the queen, the old man found himself displaced, and a new cabinet and set of advisers selected from the friends and cousins of the queen. His rage knew no bounds, and from that time forth he planned her destruction. How he finally succeeded in carrying out his malicious intentions must be related later. Thus far, the queen, equally shrewd and fortunate, had escaped his toils.

To return to our palace visit, however. After examining into her majesty’s trouble, and prescribing a course of treatment, we took our leave, backing and bowing ourselves out of the royal apartments as if we had been born and bred hangers-on of courts. I soon learned that all my verbs must wear a long train of “simnaitas,” “simnikas,” and “sipsios,” the highest honorific endings when visiting the palace. Each Korean verb has a generous collection of these endings, from which the confused and unwary stranger must select at his peril, when addressing natives of different ranks; but there is no doubt, fortunately, about what must be used at the palace, and one feels quite safe if every verb is tipped with a “simnaita” or “simnika.” To be sure, there are high Chinese-derived words, which natives always use there, instead of the simpler Anglo-Saxon—I should say, Korean—but uninitiated foreigners are not expected to know them, and are really most generously excused for all mistakes. Koreans are in this respect models of kindness and politeness, and will often hear newcomers make the most laughable and absurd mistakes without a single spasm of countenance to show that they have taken note of the blunder.

Not many days after this visit to the palace, an official appeared at my home with a number of interesting and beautiful gifts from the queen, including a fine embroidered screen, embroidered pillow, and bed cushions, native silks, linens, cotton materials, fans, pockets and various other articles.

Her majesty was extremely generous, and it was nothing unusual for her thus to bestow in most munificent fashion gifts upon the members of our mission whom she had met, and upon the ladies of the legations. Every Korean New Year’s day any of us who were in the slightest way connected with the palace or government institutions received many pheasants, bags of nuts, pounds of beef, large fish, hundreds of eggs and pounds of dried persimmons.

On the royal birthdays, too, dainties were sent to us, and at the beginning of each summer dozens of fans and jars of honey water were presented. This open-handed generosity indicated not only the queen’s kind disposition, but the favor with which all Americans were regarded by the Korean authorities, due largely to the favorable impression which Dr. Allen had made, and also perhaps to the fact that we belonged to a large and powerful nation, which had no object in interfering in Eastern politics in any way to the detriment of Korea, and which might become an efficient ally and defender.

During my first year I had the exciting and doubtful privilege of being present at a native sectional or stone fight, an experience which few covet even once—and which the wise and informed, at least of womankind, invariably forego. Once a year at a certain season, where two neighborhoods or sections have grievances against each other, they settle them by one of these fights. They choose captains, arrange the opposing parties, and begin firing stones and tiles at each other. As one crowd or the other is by turns victorious, and the pursued flee before their enemies, and as those who are at one moment triumphant are often the very next the vanquished, hotly chased, it is almost impossible to find any safe point of vantage from which to view the conflict. At any instant the place one has chosen, as well removed and safe, may become the ground of the hottest battle. Very large stones are often thrown, and people are fatally injured, though not as frequently as one would think. It is a wonder that hundreds are not killed or wounded. In going from my home to visit a friend one day, a few weeks after my arrival, I was obliged to pass a large crowd of men, who seemed divided into two parties, and were very noisy and vociferous. I remarked upon this to my friend, and sending to inquire, we found it was the preliminaries of a stone fight which I had witnessed. Her husband said it would not be safe for me to return alone, and therefore to my lasting gratitude offered to see me through it.

We soon found that the stones and missiles were coming our way, and were forced to run for shelter to a Korean house. For a few moments the fight was hot around us, and then as it seemed to have passed on—quite far down the street—we ventured forth, only to find that the tide had again turned, and the whole mob were tearing in our direction. Mr. Bunker, for it was he, said there was nothing for it but to scale a half-broken wall into an adjacent compound, and run for it to the house of Mr. Gilmore, not far distant. So, reckless of my best gown, I scaled the wall with great alacrity, and we ran for it quite shamelessly. Missiles of considerable size were raining around us, and the possibility, or rather probability, that one would soon light on our heads, accelerated our speed to no small degree. These affairs are often funny in retrospect, but smack strongly of the tragic at the time, while the outcome is so decidedly uncertain. However, by much dodging and circling, frequently sheltering ourselves under the wall, we at length reached Mr. Gilmore’s house, when, in a somewhat ruffled and perturbed condition, I waited till the coast was quite clear and found my way home, a wiser and deeply thoughtful woman.

On one occasion not long since an affair of this kind threatened very serious results for a hot-headed young compatriot of ours, who went to photograph one of these fights. A cool-headed American recently snapped his camera on a tiger here before shooting it, and it may have been in emulation of him, that our young friend made this attempt. He soon became convinced that he was the object at which all the missiles were sent, and that the bloodthirsty ruffians were all seeking his life. Being unfortunately as well as unlawfully armed with a six-shooter, over-excited and alarmed, he fired into the crowd and fled. His bullet entered the fleshy part of the leg of one of the natives, who fell, as most of them supposed, mortally wounded; and now indeed the wrath of the crowd on both sides was directed at its hottest against the thoroughly frightened young man. He ran for his life—the crowd pursuing with yells of fury. Camera and overcoat were flung away—he had nearly a mile to go to reach shelter in the American legation, which he at length managed to do, panting and almost exhausted. As his victim was not seriously hurt, he escaped with the payment of a fine, a few weeks’ imprisonment, a most severe reprimand, and a polite request to leave the country.

The Koreans often evince considerable military skill in the tactics of these civil battles. Sharpshooters armed with slings will take possession of some high point, and others are sent to take them by surprise and dislodge them, suddenly creeping upon them from the rear, or scaling the rampart in the face of the enemy’s fire. These natives repeatedly prove themselves good fighters and no cowards, when armed and facing not too unequal numbers.

During this my first summer in Korea I was invited to attend a royal Quaga. This was a very interesting assemblage of Korean scholars, who met in the palace grounds, and there in little tents or booths wrote theses in Chinese on some subject given by the king. Those whose papers passed a successful examination were rewarded with some civil rank, supposed to be proportioned to the excellence of their standing. I should think that more than a thousand men from all parts of the country were gathered in these grounds, busily writing or copying their papers, some of which were then being handed to the judges.

I was told, however, that in nearly all the successful cases money was necessary to aid the judgment and clarify the minds of the judges. We were treated with great kindness, invited to a fine pavilion, and later offered refreshments in the royal dining hall. This old-time (shall I say, dishonored) institution has now fallen into disuse for some years. No doubt in its honest beginnings a truly competitive examination for office, it was good and useful, but abuses creeping in, rendered it an empty form to be finally abolished as a useless and effete remnant of ancient days.

Another event of the summer was a little trip made to Poukhan, or the northern fortress, about ten miles distant from Seoul. It is said by Koreans that a secret underground road leads from it to the palace in Seoul, so that in case of any danger, or the investment of the city by enemies, the royal family could flee hither for safety. It is in truth an ideal spot for such a purpose. European soldiers have said that properly fortified it would be for months, perhaps years, impregnable. Our visit was made in Korea’s loveliest season, the month of May, which is, if possible, more beautiful than in any other land. Wild flowers of the most exquisite hue and odor abound everywhere, but at Poukhan they seemed to be in greater quantities and lovelier colors. The mountain rises bold and rugged in outline, and its scenery is wild and in places almost forbidding, but a beautiful brook dashes down its sides, leaping over huge boulders and turning everything into luxuriant beauty, like the lovely maids of fairy lore, in whose footsteps the sweetest flowers sprang and from whose lips dropped fairest gems.

This brook flows from a spring which bubbles up in the top of the mountain, so that any garrison stationed there need never surrender for want of water, nor indeed of food, for after a steep ascent of about a mile, the path suddenly pierces the rocks, and entering a picturesque gate in a more picturesque wall, all hung with ivy, dips into a verdant valley surrounded on all sides by lofty barriers of rock. Here are fertile fields where food can easily be raised and stored against an evil time.

Some of our missionaries often come here, and spend the hot and unhealthy summer weeks among the cool shades of these lofty rocks—in some of the Buddhist temples. There are some delightful little pavilions, near clear, cool pools of water, with scenery on all sides very wild, beautiful, and picturesque.

At that time, in the history of our mission nearly every foreigner possessed a horse, most of them Chinese ponies, very gentle and easy to ride. Utterly unacquainted with the nature of the people, it was feared by many that danger might suddenly arise, and that we ought to have means of escape at hand. We found them very useful and pleasant accessories, and often when the hot afternoon sun was low we explored some of the pretty and interesting surroundings of Seoul.

This city lies encircled by low mountains, whose treeless and bare outlines cut the blue horizon with a bold abruptness. Among the hills and mountain passes are pretty woods and groves—and here lies nestled many a little hamlet, entered through some charming lane, bordered with blossoming bushes of clematis, eglantine, hawthorn or syringa, in richest profusion. Mr. Underwood was often my guide on these excursions; sometimes we walked on the city wall, and saw the distant mountains and the sleeping villages beneath us, bathed in glorious moonlight, and thanked God for casting our lives in a land of so much beauty and among a people so kindly and teachable.

THE GREAT MARKET AT CHEENJU

SURROUNDINGS OF SEOUL. [PAGE 32]

During all these months and the following winter foundations were still busily laying, language helps and Bible translations were under way, and through hospital and school, as well as by direct evangelistic effort, people were being reached. The number of attendants upon the services in the little chapel was daily increasing, and reports came from the natives working in the country of inquirers and converts there, which made it seem necessary to make another extended trip as soon as possible. A second trip had already been made by Mr. Underwood, selling books and simple medicines, and gathering in here and there a little handful of converts. He met with great encouragement, but baptized few. During his first trip he traveled to the northern border of Korea, stopping in all the large towns, Songdo, Anju, Pyeng Yang, Kangai, Haiju, Ouiju. During the entire year less than twenty-five were baptized, and from the first altogether up to that time hardly fifty, while Methodists and Presbyterians together up to 1889 numbered only a little over one hundred. In April of 1888 he baptized seven men at Sorai, a village in Whang Hai, where the Gospel had been brought in from China by a Mr. Saw Sang Hyen, a convert of Mr. Ross’. Some of these men had come to the capital in the spring of 1887 and three had been baptized after careful examination.

The seven who were received in their own village had been for more than a year in preparation, and then were baptized only after Mr. Underwood had spent ten days in their village, talking with and examining them. This is mentioned to show that extreme caution was used in making the first admissions to the native church, in order that its foundations might be laid securely, if slowly. In the trip made in November, 1888, certain Koreans had been placed in a few localities to instruct, sell tracts and pave the way for the work of the foreigner on a succeeding visit. One of these men was stationed at Pyeng Yang, one at Chang Yun, and one at Ouiju. Extremely encouraging, but in some cases exaggerated reports came from all these places as to the increasing number of hopeful inquirers, and it seemed imperative that a trip should be taken as soon as spring opened, for the examination, encouragement and instruction of these new believers, and to oversee the work of the employed agents, who were necessarily unproved as yet.

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]

Of course, I walked as much as possible, but many weary miles must be endured in the chair, with its tiresome jogging, interrupted regularly with an upward jolt of several inches. The ordinary road soon came to be quite tolerable, but when the bearers in the half light of early dawn (or worse still, the evening, when tired with a long day’s march) picked their way over the narrow foot-paths, slippery with clay, between half-submerged rice fields, or jumped across intervening ditches, the rear man going wholly by faith, I must say it was not easy or pleasant.

We had quite a little train. Mr. Underwood was on his horse, with a mapoo to lead and care for it. These horses are all fed on a hot food of beans and chopped hay, and very carefully attended to. We had two or three pack-ponies which carried medicines, tracts, at that time mostly Chinese, which only scholars could read, our blankets and bedding, a few cooking utensils, and foreign food and our clothing. The question of money and changes of horses was a difficult one, but it had been solved by an order from the Korean Foreign Office, to the country magistrates, to accept our receipt for any amount of money that we might need, and also for horses in exchange for ours, all of which bills we were to pay in Seoul on our return. The money was so extremely bulky, it was impossible to take more than a couple of days’ supply on our ponies. On previous trips Mr. Underwood had carried large lumps of silver, which were exchanged in the towns for cash.

The little inns along the road never charge for rooms; the number of tables of rice and the number of horses fed are usually the only items in the landlord’s bill. In addition to chair coolies and mapoos, we had a young Christian helper, a cook, and a kesu. The two latter left us at Pyeng Yang and returned home.

CHAPTER III

We Start on our Wedding Journey—Songdo—Guards at our Gates—Crossing the Tai-tong—Difficulties in Finding an Inn—Korean Launderings—An Old Man Seeks to be Rid of Sin—Mob at an Inn—A Ruffian Bursts Open my Door—Fight in the Inn Yard—Pat Defies the Crowd—Convenience of Top-knots—A Magistrate Refuses to Shelter Us—The “Captain” to the Rescue—Pack-ponies—We Lay a Deep Scheme—Torch Bearers—A Mountain Hamlet—Tiger Traps—Tigers—A Band of Thirty Conspire to Attack Us—Guns Used by Native Hunters—A Tiger Story.

We started on our trip at early dawn, turning directly north, on the road passing under the arch, which then marked the spot where the representatives of Korea yearly met the Chinese ambassadors who came to receive tribute. This custom was maintained until Korea’s independence was declared; in honor of which the old arch was then taken down and a finer one erected. Beyond this arch lay the pass, a narrow, muddy and stony way, leading through the mountain. It was crowded with oxen and pack-ponies, going to and from Seoul. Shouting mapoos and coolies added to the confusion, great rocks seemed just ready to fall from above and crush the unlucky passers, and many which had fallen from time to time impeded the road. Now a fine road has been made across the hill, and the old way of danger and discomfort is closed up. From its darkness, its fiendish noises, gruesome odors and bad going it would not have been an unfit image of Bunyan’s Valley of the Shadow of Death. The snow still remained in sheltered places, for it was only March, and the morning air was sharp and chill, but we found a very fine road all the way to Songdo.

We made our first halt at noon, at a small village between Seoul and Songdo, and I had my first experience of a native inn. The Korean inn is second only in filth, closeness, bad odors and discomfort to those in the interior of China. There is usually only one room for women, which has from one to four or five paper-covered doors or windows—they are nearly always the same size and bear the same name—opening into the kitchen, the court and the sarang. This room is often not more than eight by ten or twelve feet large, and very low. The paper which covers the door is commonly blackened with dirt, so that few indeed are the rays of light which manage to struggle in a disheartened way into these gloomy little apartments. They boast little or no furniture, perhaps a chang or Korean cabinet (most unique and antique-looking chests, much ornamented with brass or black iron hinges, locks, etc.) stands against the wall, upon which are piled a great many bright-colored quilts and pillows, not the wooden ones sometimes described and much used, but like old-style long sofa pillows, and very much more comfortable. At the center of the ceiling, just under the roof tree, may be seen a bunch of dirty rags, feathers and sticks, where the household Lares and Penates are supposed to roost. A wharrow or charcoal fire-pot with a smouldering fire probably stands somewhere on the floor. This should be promptly removed, as its presence often causes severe headache, and sometimes asphyxia, from which one of the missionaries was only resuscitated after repeated fainting and hours of effort on the part of a companion.

In most of the inns very picturesque tall brass or wooden lamp-stands are seen. They consist of a rod about two and a half feet high, on a good solid base with a little bracket at the top for a saucer of castor oil, and an ox horn hanging below containing the main supply of oil. The lamp or saucer contains a small wick which yields a very tiny light, just enough to emphasize and make visible the darkness. Often these lamps have a special niche, or little cupboard in the wall, where they are enclosed during the day. Nearly always a stout bar crosses the room about a foot from the wall, and three or four feet from the floor, on which garments may be hung, and as commonly there is a wide shelf running around two or three sides of the apartment, very near the roof, on which are sundry household utensils, winter vegetables, very likely piles of yeast cakes for the manufacture of beer, and, in fact, a heterogeneous collection, too numerous and varied to mention. Here lies a dusty old book, there a work basket, and further on the wooden block and clubs used for ironing, a bottle of medicine, a pile of rice bowls, or a box of matches.

The mats which are placed over the oiled paper, or more likely directly on the earth floor, are full of dust and vermin of all descriptions, which run riot everywhere. It is best not to begin to think how many people have, in that room and lying on these identical mats, been ill, and died, of dysentery, small-pox, cholera or typhus fever, since the room was even swept or the mats once shaken. A “really truly” cleaning they are ignorant of. Fumigation and disinfection are as far beyond the flights of their wildest imagination as the private life of the man in the moon. The miracle over which we never cease to wonder and admire is that so many people of clean antecedents who travel through the interior are able to resist the microbes, bacteria, germs and all similar enemies under whatsoever name which, according to all modern science, ought to attack and destroy them in short order.

In most of the inns, tall earthen jars, from two to three, or rarely four feet high, and two or three feet in diameter, in which Ali Baba’s cutthroat thieves could easily hide, are ranged along the side of the wall, but more frequently in the courtyard. They contain various kinds of grain, pickles, beer, wine, and there are always several holding kimchi (a sort of sauerkraut), without which they never eat rice.

Numbers of dogs, cats, chickens, pigs and ducks are under foot in the courtyard, oxen and ponies are noisily feeding in the stalls, under the same roof with ourselves, only just outside the paper door, and if one is to sleep it must be in spite of a combined grunting, squealing, cackling, blowing and barking, anything but conducive to repose. Most of the hotels have, as has been said, only one inner room, where it is proper for a woman to stay. Our helper, chair-coolies, mapoos and other travelers use the sarang, packed very likely like sardines in a box, and the host’s family turn out, and go to a neighbor’s for the night, unless the inn is a large one on the main road. A large and fashionable inn in Korea would have perhaps five, or even six, sleeping apartments—though I do not recollect having seen so many.

Now we travel with cot-beds which roll up and slip into heavy canvas bags, and take up very little room on the pack. These blessings keep us off the dirty floors, which are usually much too hot for health, unless, indeed, one has come in wet, cold, and aching from a long tramp, when they are a specific preventive of colds and rheumatism. On that first journey, however, we had nothing of this sort, but we sent out for some bundles of fresh clean straw used for thatch—one thing, at least, of which there is plenty in every village—and piled them at least a foot high. We spread thereon our bed, to the confusion and defeat of our little enemies, ploughing their weary way uselessly through the mazes of that straw all night. In this way we slept peacefully, except when the floor became intolerably hot, and our bed correspondingly so, then we rose, piled our straw in another place, remade our couch, and composed ourselves again to slumber. We never did this more than three times in one night, and it was a mere diversion.

The situation, however, develops into something quite beyond a joke, as was hinted in a former chapter, when one is forced to travel in hot weather. The rice and beans for men and animals must be cooked, which means—in nine cases out of ten—that a fire must be built under your room, and you must sleep on the stove, although the thermometer is already in the seventies before it is kindled. The room, you remember, is small and low, the windows opening to the court probably few. You look longingly at the open porch or maru, but there are leopards and tigers that prowl at night, or wanting these, no lack of rats, ferrets, and snakes; there are foul smells and rank poisonous vapors, pools of green water and sewage all about, a famous place in the damp night air to soak a system full of malaria, more deadly than wild beasts; so with a sigh you turn again to your oven, prepared for the worst. Up, up, steadily climbs the thermometer, your pulses throb, your head snaps, you gasp and pant for breath, and at length toward morning, when the fire is dead, and the hot stones a little cooled, you fall into an exhausted feverish sleep. But an early start is necessary to make the next stage, and by four o’clock at least a new fire is built to cook more rice, and you rush out of doors, to draw a whiff of pure air and cool your burning temples.

So even if it were not for the rains, flooded roads, and overflowing, unbridged rivers, we should not travel except from dire necessity in the summer. Tents have not been found practicable among the missionaries in the rainy season, and their use has been followed in several instances by severe and even fatal illness. One of the chief annoyances, especially on this our first trip, at the inns were the kugungers or sightseers. The paper doors are speedily made available as peep-holes for the foe. From all quarters the word “foreigner,” and above all “foreign woman,” spreads like wildfire. Never did a lion or an elephant create such excitement in an American village. The moment we entered an inn the house was instantly thronged, besieged, invested. Every door was full of holes made by dampening the finger and placing it with gentle pressure against the paper. It was dismaying, when we fancied ourselves quite alone, to see all those holes filled with hungry eyes. Never since have I cared to visit a show of wild animals or human freaks. I sympathize with them so fully, that there is no pleasure in the satisfaction of curiosity at such a cost. We wished to meet the people, but we could not talk with such a mob, in any satisfactory way, as their frantic curiosity about us made it impossible for them to attend to what we had to tell until they were in some measure satisfied. But to return to our trip.

Some twenty miles this side of Songdo the road crosses the Imgin river, where a ferry boat is in readiness to carry the traveler and his belongings to the other side. A story is told here of the patriotism of a nobleman who lived in a magnificent summer house on the bluff overlooking the river, at the time of the Hedioshi rebellion. His king, fleeing from the Japanese, arrived here at midnight, and to light him and his escort to the ferry this man set fire to his beautiful home. As a result of this, the king crossed in safety, and escaped his enemies. In token of his gratitude, he therefore ordered that a summer house should be kept perpetually in memory of his loyal friend on the site of the one which had been sacrificed, and loaded him with honors and rewards.

The city of Songdo is one of the largest in Korea, and from a Korean standpoint probably the most important commercially, as well as the richest. Here is grown the ginseng, so highly prized by Koreans, Chinese and Japanese, and sold—the best—at forty-five dollars a pound; more than its weight in gold. Though Songdo was formerly the nation’s capital, a successful rebel general, making himself king, established his seat of government in Seoul.

We arrived in this ancient city about sundown, and shortly afterwards met ten Christian inquirers. In a few days we sold all our books, and medicines, which we expected would last for the entire trip, and had to send back to Seoul for more. We were besieged by large crowds of people during our stay, so that we were obliged to ask for a guard at the gate. We admitted fifty at a time, and when their curiosity had been sated, their diseases treated, and they had bought as many books as they wanted, they were dismissed, to make room for another pushing, struggling, eagerly curious fifty. Mr. Underwood baptized no one, but met, examined and instructed inquirers, and directed and corrected his native helper’s work.

Songdo is about forty-five miles from Seoul, and has about two hundred thousand inhabitants. Thus far the Southern Methodists are the only ones who have a station there, though just why we other missionaries never started work in so important a center it would be hard to say; except that it did not seem to develop there at first as promisingly, shall I say, as insistently, as in some other places, where need was so pressing we never could obtain workers enough to supply the demand, far less start new centers.

TAI-TONG RIVER. [PAGE 45]

FERRY BOAT. [PAGE 43]

Songdo has no gates. It is said that they were removed, with the privileges as well of the Quaga, because the people of that city so persistently continued to despise and treat with contempt the authority of Seoul. Whereas it is the custom to speak of going up to Seoul, they would refer to going down to that city; they would not measure their grain from right to left, as in Seoul, but from left to right; and worst of all, from having constantly referred to the king as a pig, they came to speak of a pig by the king’s name!

From Songdo, we proceeded north, by short stages to Pyeng Yang, which was the next place of importance, where Mr. Underwood looked for inquirers and where there were already a few Christians. We reached the Tai-tong River, which lay just below the city gates between us and it, in a driving snow storm. Long and loudly did the various members of our party try their lungs in the effort to obtain a boat, but at length, when patience was quite exhausted, the ferryman, or one of them, arrived with a great flat-bottomed boat, which accommodated us all—ponies, packs, coolies, chair, helpers and missionaries—and landed us in mud and safety on the other side for a few cash. I had almost forgotten, however, to speak of the beautiful road leading up to this ferry, with its noble overarching trees and its variety of beautiful bushes and flowers. Even at that bleak and wintry season it was lovely, and a month later, when we returned, it was charming, with its green woodland shade and its wealth of sweet-scented blossoms. Now, alas! it is quite shorn of its beauty, for during the Japanese-Chinese war, the trees were all cut down.

We were no sooner within the city gates than a very noisy and constantly increasing crowd followed close at our heels, growing ever more annoying and demonstrative, till its dimensions and behavior were altogether too much like a mob. Respectable and frightened inn-keepers one after another turned us from their doors until the uncomfortable possibility of being obliged to spend the night in the streets suggested itself. However, after a time we found a refuge, and with the aid of a policeman from the magistracy we managed to keep the mob at bay, seeing only a stated number at a time, as in Songdo. It rained during most of our stay, and I could with no comfort or safety go out even in a chair to see the town, for if I so much as peeped out, some one caught sight of the foreign woman, and at once a crowd gathered which made it impossible to move or to accomplish anything. Once before we left I accompanied Mr. Underwood to a pleasant spot outside the gates, which he thought would be a good site for a sub-station, and we made a visit to the mother of one of our Christians. She was extremely sick, and as she recovered not long after we were very happy in having left a good impression and a grateful family behind us.

I had a practical illustration of the inconvenience of Korean methods of laundry in this town, for giving out a number of articles to the tender mercies of a Korean woman, they were returned minus all the buttons. They had pounded the garments on a stone in some stream, and as a precaution had removed all these little conveniences before doing so. There was no starch, no bluing, and no ironing. Korean clothes before ironing must be ripped, and are then pounded for hours on a smooth piece of wood until they obtain a beautiful gloss. Koreans are, however, not without iron irons. They have quite a large one, which holds hot charcoal, and two sorts of small ones, not more than half an inch wide by two or three inches in length, with a long handle, for pressing the seams of sleeves, and of garments which it is only desirable to press on the seam.

After a stay of about a week in Pyeng Yang, during which time we saw a great many visitors, most of whom came from curiosity, but none of whom went away without a printed or spoken word about the gospel, we again started out on our journey north. Oh, if one prophetic vision might have been granted us of what was to be in such a few years! If we could have seen those dreary and heart-sickening wastes of humanity transformed into fields of rich grain waiting in harvest glory for the sickle, if we could have seen the hundreds now gathered yearly into the garner, how our hearts would have burned within us! “But the love of God is broader than the measure of man’s mind,” and though we saw visions and dreamed dreams, we hardly dared hope they would all be fulfilled. God kept the future hidden as a sweet surprise. Just after leaving this city an old man of seventy-six came three miles to inquire of us “concerning the religion by which a man could be rid of sin,” one of the first fruits of that later harvest, which God permitted us to reap.

Ernsan, one of the small villages at which we spent the night, turned out to be a very rough sort of place. We were obliged in many of these towns to use the Foreign Office letter to obtain the shelter of the magistracies, as often the inns would not receive us or would prove no defense against the rudeness of the curious mobs, and we had no Christian constituency to fall back upon. At this particular place the magistrate was away, and the “chabin duli” (roughs) were not under ordinary restraint.

In the morning, as the time for leaving drew near, a crowd of about one hundred men and large boys assembled in the little courtyard waiting for a kugung (sight) of the two curiosities. My husband, well aware that a woman who permits herself to be viewed by strange men is not respected or respectable in Korea, had my chair brought into the house, and the door closed, so that I might be shut in there and pass out unseen. On finding themselves thus balked of perhaps the one great opportunity of their lives to behold these strange, wild animals, some of the baser fellows could not restrain their curiosity, and one of them, probably egged on by the others, broke open the door of my bedroom. Than this, no greater breach of law or propriety is recognized in the land, and the guilty wretch is amenable to almost any punishment the injured woman’s friends may choose to inflict. My husband, standing near the door, lifted his foot as the proper member with which to express his sentiments—the tongue being incapable of sufficient vigor and the hand too good—and this, though only a demonstration—the man was not touched—was sufficient encouragement to my chair coolies, who, considering their own honor bound up with mine for the time being, rushed forth to punish the “vile creature” who had insulted us all.

One of them, a brawny fellow whom we called Pat, from his resemblance to gentlemen of the nationality which favors that name, at a bound had singled out his prey from the midst of the crowd and dragged him forth from his encircling friends and protectors.

He dragged him forth in the usual approved Korean method, under such circumstances, by the top-knot, a very convenient and effective handle, for a man once in the grasp of his enemy in this way is practically at his mercy. He was soon on the ground being pummelled. But it must be remarked that we were but a little party, four coolies, one helper, one missionary, one woman, and they were a hundred or more strong. Our calling and dearest hopes forbade our using severe measures, nor would they, even firearms, have availed for long, but would only have served to make enemies for us on all sides, supposing we had frightened this crowd into order. So it behooved us to make peace, and speedily, for there were black looks and angry and threatening murmurings as the friends of the culprit drew near, preparing to defend him.

METHOD OF IRONING. [PAGE 46]

So Mr. Underwood rushed down into the crowd, drew off our exasperated coolie, and quieted the rising storm. But Patrick could not depart without giving some expression to his indignation, and waving his chair rod like a shillalah in the air around his head, he stood at the top of the steps, his back to the crowd (the pure Korean method in quarrels), vociferously announcing to whom it might concern his opinion of such actions in general, and this one in particular, and bidding them, in the spirit of James Fitz James at the ford

“Come one, come all, this rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I.”

But my husband saw that it would be best to get away while we could without exasperating them further, and before the temper of the crowd should change again for the worse. A similar occurrence in either China or Japan would almost certainly have ended very differently for us.

The Koreans do not bear malice, nor are they very revengeful or cruel without great provocation. We merely had to do with a rough crowd, who gathered thinking we were probably a base sort of people; and when they saw that we behaved as quiet, decent Koreans would do, they respected our reserve and curbed their curiosity, though a few boys threw stones and hooted, and they all followed us a few rods outside the village, but we soon found ourselves peacefully alone.

Before passing on I must say a few words on the general effectiveness of the top-knot method. It is a great pity men do not wear their hair in this way in America. We women who favor women’s rights would soon find it a mighty handle by which to manage them, for in the hands of a discerning woman it is indeed an instrument of unlimited possibilities. Who would care to wield a scepter abroad, who could wield a top-knot at home? By one of these well-tied arrangements have I beheld a justly irate wife dragging home her drunken husband from the saloon; and firmly grasping this, I have seen more than one indignant female administering that corporal punishment which her lord and master no doubt richly deserved. The Korean wife stands and serves her husband while he eats, she works while he smokes, but when family affairs come to a certain crisis, she takes the helm (that is to say, the top-knot) in hand, and puts the ship about.

At another of our stopping places on this road we found a magistrate who had been so long in the interior and who was so ignorant and illiterate that he neither knew the uses of a passport, nor could read it when presented. This was serious, indeed, for here with a rough and curious crowd to be refused the shelter of the magistracy might mean our being subjected to mob violence, and would almost certainly insure our passing the night on the road. Here we must exchange exhausted pack-ponies for fresh ones, here we must obtain money for the next stage, and food and fire for our tired coolies and ourselves. So when our helper returned with the disquieting news that the magistrate would none of us, “the captain” donned his harness, and passport in hand, strode into the presence, gesticulated, I am afraid, stamped, waved the passport in the air, flung it to the ground, and by dint of noise and vehemence succeeded in impressing the astonished little official with a sense of the dignity and importance of the Foreign Office passports in the hands of strenuous Westerners.

He promptly and politely gave us rooms, money, ponies, everything we needed, in order to rid himself of us and our arguments, I suppose, and no doubt he still recalls us as the most remarkable and alarming intruders who ever disturbed his quiet and uneventful life.

But although sheltered by the magisterial walls our annoyances were not over. Word had been passed far and near of the arrival of foreigners, and the crowds gathered thicker and thicker. They were only rude and good-naturedly curious, but curiosity is a strange passion when really aroused, as only those who have been its victims know. Men will travel miles, will undergo unheard-of fatigues and surmount great difficulties, and will pay very little regard to the convenience, comfort or even safety of those who try to oppose them in their desires to gratify this passion.

Aware that we were besieged, we hung shawls and rain coats round the room, before the doors and windows, hoping to prevent the usual peep-show made by perforating fingers, and thus fortified, seated ourselves in front of our trunk, which served for a table, to partake of our meal during the short respite thus gained. A smothered titter made us look quickly around. Long slender rods had been pushed through the peep-holes, the curtains lifted, multitudes of eyes applied to new holes, and we were well in view. I must honestly confess that in some of these baffled moments, in the hot fire of the enemy’s ungenerous triumph, I have thought with glee of the execution which could be done with a syringe well aimed at those eye-filled holes, if we were just common travelers and not longing to win all hearts and ready to bear all such small annoyances with patience for the love of these poor people, even the most annoying of them. And now that I am more fully seasoned, I endure these rude intrusions into my privacy with more sang froid, excusing and understanding it.

About this stage in our journey our provisions ran very low, and among other things sugar gave out. Natives do not have this article of food, but we were able to get the Korean buckwheat honey, than which I have never tasted any more delicious, and we found that it improved the flavor of the finest tea.

Here in these far recesses of the interior, where we were uncertain of the temper of the people, and where many more than doubtful characters were known to be in hiding, the magistrates thought it necessary to send at least one, sometimes two, officials with us.

At the town of Huiju we found the scenery growing quite wild, the hills rising into mountains (though not very high ones), the road zig-zagging up and up, while a brawling, hurrying brook ran noisily below. Here we found the first spring flowers under the lingering snow, and above the snow were butterflies darting about in the sunshine, quite sure that they were in the right place, since the Father sent them, even though it did look a little cold and bleak; and then if one only looked up, there was the sun. Just here in the steepest, dizziest and most difficult part of the ascent, two of those poor little pack-ponies which I had been pitying all along for the terrible way their relentless mapoos overloaded them, began fighting (loads and all), and after kicking each other in the liveliest fashion for some time, squealing like little fiends, while the poor mapoos were dancing and vociferating around them trying to bring about a truce, they finally scampered off in different directions, and then and there my heart hardened, and never since has pity for these animals entered it. They are, I firmly opine, as self-willed, spoiled, obstinate, quarrelsome, uncertain, tricky and tough little beasts as ever carried a load.

Among many other people treated at this little village, a woman came sixteen miles for medicine, and carried away as well the news of the Great Physician. Thus the mission to the body proves effective to the soul, and the seed is scattered far and wide. How that little seed prospered He only knows who has promised that those who cast it upon the water shall find it after many days.

Here, after we had eaten our supper, Mr. Underwood and I conceived a deep scheme to escape the stuffy little cage-like room and take a walk by moonlight in the midst of that lovely scenery. It would of course be futile to go out of the gate, for then the alarm would be given, and we should be hounded by the entire able-bodied portion of the populace. But the wall was low, and waiting till we supposed every one had retired for the night, we stealthily crept like a couple of criminals out of our quarters, surmounted the wall, and were at last free, and for once alone, away from staring eyes, to enjoy the sweet air and each other’s company. But alas! we had hardly gone twenty paces when a Korean cur (than which only a Korean pig is more detestable) espied or nosed us, and at once set up a loud and continuous bark. We hurried on, hoping to escape, but it was not to be; one white form after another appeared at the doorways, soon a quickly swelling stream of people were in our wake, and the game was up. We returned and retraced our steps, attended by a long retinue, entered by the gate, and hid our discomfiture within the walls of our little dungeon.

From Huiju our road led up farther, over a still higher mountain, and here we were provided, according to the conditions of our passport, with oxen instead of ponies to carry our loads (being stronger and surer footed), and also, as for all travelers belated and overtaken by darkness, torches of blazing pine knots or long grass carried by some of the villagers to a certain distance, where it was the business of others to meet us with new ones. The men who provide the oxen and torches are given the use of certain fields by the government in payment for such services, but often they are unfaithful. The belated traveler pounds long at their gates in vain. Some neighbor appears to say the man is sick or away. At length, when a reward has been given, and when patience has not only ceased to be a virtue, but ceased to exist at all, he or his wife appears and deliberately prepares the long-desired torch.

On the other side of this mountain, as we descended into the valley, we found a village which presented a very different aspect from any we had yet seen. The houses were not made of a basket work of twigs filled in with mud, like the ordinary native dwellings, but of heavy logs. The little compounds surrounding each house were enclosed with high fences made of strong timbers, each sharpened to a point at the top and firmly bound together, instead of the usual hedge of blossoming bushes or tile-covered mud wall. It all looked as if these farmers and foresters were prepared for a siege, but from what enemy?

There were no Indians or wild tribes here. It was a most picturesque place. The mountains rose grandly above us, all around were woods, and a beautiful stream rippled along between them and the village. It was a glorious moonlit night, the atmosphere seemed fairly to sparkle with brilliancy. Again, after supper, we prepared to take a walk. Few indeed had been our opportunities for such honeymoon observances as this, which are supposed to be the peculiar privilege and bounden duty of all the good newly married. As has been noted already, the large crowds which watched our every movement, and from whose observation not the smallest motion was lost, precluded any such folly on our part, but here, far off in the wild recesses of the woods and mountains, in a village whose inhabitants seemed nobly exceptional in the praise-worthy habit of keeping at home, here we might wander at will, in the enchanting light, listening anon to the silvery cadences of the stream. So we sauntered along in the most approved fashion of honeymooners until a few steps beyond the confines of the village, where woods closed in on all sides.

We had observed here and there as we passed along what looked like a sort of huge pen made of logs, weighted with great stones on top, strangely constructed, as if for the housing of some large animal. Now as we stood on the edge of the brook trying to decide whether to cross into the woods, a sound as of heavy and yet stealthy footsteps on the dry leaves in the shadow of the trees arrested our attention. An uncanny mystery seemed to hang over everything. Slightly startled by the sound, we awakened to the fact that the pens we had seen must be tiger traps, that this was a famous tiger tramping ground (they would naturally come to the brook to drink), that the enemy against whom the village was so strongly fortified were these beasts of prey, and that it would be in every way profitable to us to postpone our moonlight rambles for some more propitious time and place. So with a less lover-like and more business-like pace we returned to the prosaic but welcome shelter of the huts.

Korean tiger skins are very fine when the animal has been killed in the winter, but unfortunately the natives do not understand the proper method of preserving them, and those which are taken away, as well as the leopard skins, very soon become denuded of hair. The natives prize the claws very highly, and often remove them as soon as the beast is killed. They are found from the Manchurian border through the whole country, among the mountains; more than once have they been seen in the capital since my arrival, and only a few months after I landed a leopard was seen in the Russian legation compound next to our house. As our homes were all bungalows, and the extreme heat of summer nights necessitated open windows, I often lay awake after this for hours at night, certain that I heard the stealthy, heavy tread and deep breathing of one of these creatures in my room.

But to return to our experiences in the tiger valley, which were not yet done. While Mr. Underwood and I were taking a walk together that evening we heard in the valley below us the sharp report of a gun. The house in which we were was on the side of a hill, while our servants’ quarters, and indeed most of the village, was in the valley just below. Shortly some one came running to tell us that a tiger had just been shot. This was slightly exciting, but turned out later to have been a mere excuse to quiet any alarm I might have felt on hearing the explosion of the gun.

The real facts were, it seemed, that a band of some thirty men, probably fugitives from justice, and robbers, had conspired to visit us that night at midnight and destroy the vile foreigners who had dared to intrude into the sacred precincts of this mountain land, and thus warned, no more strangers should trouble their shores. They had drunk together to the success of their plot, and the leader had rather overdone this part of it. Far gone in intoxication, he had been too much fuddled to keep to the plan, had come several hours in advance of the time, had loudly boasted in the little inn of their intentions, and fired his gun in a fit of bravado. At the command of the head of the village he was immediately seized and locked up and his gun taken away. It was a poor old-fashioned affair, arranged with a long fuse wound around the bearer’s wrist, lighted when ready to fire, and inserted in an arm held up by the trigger, the pulling of which raised and removed a small cap which protected the priming powder and dropped the fuse upon it, thus firing the gun. It is with these awkward and clumsy weapons that the cool Korean hunters face and shoot the most formidable leopards, tigers, wild boars and bears which abound in the mountains of Korea. The Korean nobles use tiger and leopard skins on their carrying chairs, and the teeth and claws for ornaments, while the bones, when ground up, are supposed to be unrivalled as a tonic.

Many are the tiger stories told by Koreans; their folklore abounds with them. One very brief one is all I have time to insert. Once upon a time a fierce tiger crept stealthily into a village in search of prey. But every one was in bed, the cattle and pigs well guarded behind palisaded walls, not a child, a dog, or even a chicken lingered outside. He was about to retire in despair of finding a supper there when he spied through the small aperture at the bottom of a gate, such as is found in all gates for the egress of dogs and cats, a small and trembling dog. His majesty tried in vain to squeeze through this hole, and finding it hopeless, took a careful survey of the wall. It was high, it is true, and sharply spiked, but sharply set too was the royal appetite, and he resolved to try the leap, after carefully reckoning the height to be surmounted and his own strength. He was a great agile fellow, and with the exertion of all his might he jumped, barely escaping the spikes, and landed safely inside the inclosure, quite ready for his supper, well aware that he must snatch it quickly and be gone ere the hunter in the cottage should espy and shoot him. But puppy had gathered his tail between his legs, and with loud and long kiyies had slipped through the opening to the outer side of the wall. Nothing remained for our hungry prowler but to try another leap, only to find that his supper had again given him the slip. Alas, that his brains were not equal to his perseverance and industry! I grieve to be obliged to relate that this greedy fellow vaulted back and forth in pursuit of his meal, his anger and appetite growing with every leap, until he died of exhaustion and fell an ignominious prey to his small and elusive foe, illustrating the fact that might does not always win and that the small and weak need not always despair in the contest with size and strength.

In the little hamlet where we met the adventure with the man who meant to kill us we were treated to fine venison and delicious honey. All through the woods we found anemones and other spring flowers and saw specimens of the beautiful pink ibis, belonging to the same family as the bird so often worshiped in Egypt. On the road hither and all around us we saw stacked and ready for sale cords of fine dark hard woods, of which we did not know the names, but much of which looked like black walnut. No one who has traveled through this part of the country could possibly say there was a dearth of trees in Korea, or of singing birds, or sweet-scented flowers, or gorgeous butterflies.

CHAPTER IV

Leaving Kangai—We Choose a Short Cut—Much Goitre in the Mountains—A Deserted Village—The Jericho Road—We are Attacked by Robbers—A Struggle in the Inn Yard—Odds too great—Our Attendants are Seized and Carried Off—The Kind Inn-Keeper—Inopportune Patients—A Race for Life—A City of Refuge—A Beautiful Custom—Safe at Last—The Magistrate Turns Out to be an Old Friend—The Charge to the Hunters.

Our next stopping place of importance was the town of Kangai. This was a walled city of between ten and twenty thousand inhabitants in the northern part of the province of Pyeng An Do. Being in the center of a rather turbulent and independent community, at least at that time—and when were mountaineers not so?—and quite near the Chinese border, its governor was invested with almost provincial authority, had a large number of soldiers always under arms, and surrounded himself with the greatest possible show of power and state, having a numerous and obsequious body-guard, a gun fired whenever he left his office, and a great retinue of menials and officials who constantly attended him. He told us that all this was necessary to overawe the people and establish his prestige and dignity. He was a relative of the queen, and I had met him at the palace.

As we approached the city and about three miles outside of it, we saw in the distance a little company of soldiers with flying banners and sounding trumpets, awaiting us apparently at the foot of a hill. What this might portend we were at a loss to guess. It might mean fetters and warder for intrusive foreigners, it might mean an order to return, it might mean our immediate extinction, but so kind had been our reception everywhere, barring sightseers, that we did not entertain any serious misgivings, although greatly puzzled as to what the demonstration could possibly signify. However, we marched right up, as if this martial array concerned us not in the least. As soon as we came within saluting distance the leader of the little company made us the most profound obeisance and announced that he had been sent to escort us to the city. So we proceeded with this rather cumbersome addition to our modest suite, and not only this, for small boys are the same all the world over, and a motley throng of them, attracted both by the soldiers and the circus (or, shall we say, the menagerie?), closed in around us. A mile farther on a second attachment of military, with its inevitable corps of small boys, was awaiting us, and on we went, the hubbub ever increasing, drums beating, trumpets sounding, flags flying, wooden shoes clattering over the stones, louder, it seemed to me, than all the rest, as I cowered in the shelter of my closely curtained chair.

PRINCE YU CHAI SOON, COUSIN OF KING.

HIGH KOREAN OFFICIAL, KIM YAN SIK. [PAGE 23]

Momentarily the formidable dimensions of the crowd increased, while other bands of soldiers joined us at intervals, for which I was devoutly thankful, for while the crowd seemed good-natured and simply wildly curious, at the same time we were strangers, to whom Koreans had the reputation of being inimical. With so large a crowd a small matter may kindle a blaze of fury, and as we were rather inexperienced and ignorant of the character of the people, I felt that whatever the intentions of the magistrate might be, the hand of the responsible official would be gentle compared with the hands of the mob. And yet looking back on it all now, in the light of all that has since occurred, it was not altogether inappropriate but in a way fitting, that the first heralds of the gospel and the advent of Christianity to this province should be with banners, trumpets and great acclaim. The Kingdom had come, if only in its smallest beginnings, and had come to stay.

The wonder of it, which will grow, I think, more and more through the eternal ages, is that God should allow us, his poor creatures, to share with him in a work far greater than the creation of a universe, even the founding of an eternal and limitless kingdom of holiness, glory and peace.

But to return to our noisy procession. Within the city the noise and excitement (“yahdan” the Koreans would say, and nothing expresses it so well) were far greater than ever. Dancing girls and hoodlums of every description swelled the crowd, laughing, shouting, pushing, jostling. High points of vantage were occupied to the last inch with small boydom, booths or screened seats had been rented for the use of the ladies, and the streets were hardly passable. I shivered. I felt like a mouse in the power of a playful tiger. It is not a pleasant thing to feel one’s self the object of desire—even if merely in a sightseeing way—of thousands of strange people. Many in that crowd had come more than ten miles to behold us. My husband to protect me from the unpleasantness, to say the least, of falling into the hands of so large and eager a mob, hastened to the gates of the magistracy, quickly dismounted and bade the guards be ready to close them the instant my chair had entered. This was promptly done, the gates well bolted and guarded, and proud of our victory over the small boys, we hastily retired to our rooms. But hark! what noise was that, like thundering of a waterfall, or of a river dashing away its barriers? Alack! it was the boys. They had scaled the wall on each other’s shoulders, and were literally pouring over it into the compound.

I looked around the little room for some means of escape, like a hunted animal. Its windows and doors were double, the inner one sliding into the wall, but both were composed simply of a light frame of slender sticks covered with stout paper, and already the dancing girls and boys were tearing away the outer coat preparatory to forcing an entrance. Suddenly I espied a small door, which I found opened into a long dark closet, full of the dust and dirt of unclean centuries. Hither I fled, cowering in its farthest recesses. Those who looked in the windows, and saw nothing of the strange animal genus Americanum, concluded she must be in some other place, and so a short respite was granted, which Mr. Underwood and the deputy magistrate made good use of in guarding our house doors. The deputy himself was obliged to take his station there, and threatening with awful penalties any soldier who should permit the “chabin duli” (roughs and crowd) to enter uninvited. Henceforth during my stay in that town I was comparatively untroubled.

A very epidemic of diseases, however, seemed to have smitten the place. Every one needed the doctor, and old, almost forgotten complaints were resurrected and rubbed up, or if none existed new ones were invented to furnish an excuse for an introduction. People stood in long rows from morning till night to see this popular doctor, and had I been medicining for money, I might have charged almost any price and filled high our coffers; but I was only too glad to be able to tell them of the great Physician, whose unspeakable gift is without money or price.

The magistrate treated us very kindly, and one day made a dinner for Mr. Underwood at a little summer house outside the city. Here, after partaking of various Korean dainties, he asked him a great many questions about America and Americans. My husband had thus a fine opportunity to enlighten the man on our own mission and work. He of course listened politely, but the Korean noble is very difficult to reach. He is bound so rigidly by so many social, religious and political fetters, that he usually will not allow himself to consider for a moment the possibility of casting them off.

We were much disappointed at not finding here any of the inquirers of whom we had been told so much, and to examine and instruct whom Mr. Underwood had turned so far aside from the main road to his final destination, Weeju. We could only conclude that they had either been too shy to approach us in the public quarters in which we were located or that we had been entirely misinformed, and we were forced very reluctantly to accept the latter as a fact.

The magistrate sent a number of presents to us ere we left—a box of cigars, though we were not smokers, another of candied Chinese ginger, honey, flour, beef, vinegar and potatoes. These were articles which they found by diligent inquiry from our attendants that we were fond of. They scoured the country for potatoes, though except in the mountains, where rice will not grow, few Koreans cultivate or eat them.

On leaving Kangai we could either take a long road around the mountains, well known and much traveled, or a short cut through and over them, much less frequented, but which the magistrate assured us was now quite safe, as he had recently passed through there himself and believed that everything was now quiet and orderly. The locality had a bad reputation, being off the main lines of travel in the recesses of the mountains, where escaped criminals were wont to hide, and where a band of robbers were said to have made their lair. But time pressed, work was urgent, the magistrate’s statements were reassuring, and we decided to take the shorter road. We were provided with a police official and a soldier, who, our host told us, would be respected and feared, and our entire safety would thus be assured.

CARRIER OX. [PAGE 54]

THE OX-CART OR TALGOOGY. [PAGE 197]

Our road on leaving Kangai passed directly over the mountains, through a region more sparsely populated and more wildly beautiful than anything we had yet seen. There were a few stray farms where sparse crops of potatoes were raised, but the mountains hemmed us in closely on all sides. They were covered with magnificent trees; here and there a woodcutter was seen or heard, but the evidences of human life were few. We had noticed with interest through the mountain districts a large number of people for these sparsely settled regions who were afflicted with goitre.

At night we reached a small village of scarce a half dozen houses, established by the government as a place of rest for travelers, since there was no other place within convenient marching distance. A subsidy was given in return for which these natives were bound to provide refreshments, horses, oxen, or torches for those who bore passports or official orders. But travel was rare and they had come to consider their duty a tyrannical exaction, their subsidy as their right; so when we arrived an ominous silence reigned over the place, and we found it had been completely deserted and that not long since everything had been dropped and the people had fled and hidden. This inhospitable reception was a very definite sign of ill will, a plain refusal to give the shelter and assistance they were so well paid to bestow. Of course it did not auger well, but there was nothing to be done for the present but to try to supply our needs. Fires were built, horse provender found, and rice for coolies, mapoos and attendants cooked, while for ourselves we fared well on the contents of our box of stores. Some of the villagers returned that night to their homes.

Early next morning, having paid for what we had used, we started away. But the necessity for haste, as our stage that day was a long one, and our want of suspicion of any serious danger led us into making a mistake; we divided our small party, Mr. Underwood, the soldier and myself hurrying on ahead on what we afterwards called the Jericho road, leaving helpers and constable with the pack-ponies and mapoos, which traveled more slowly, to follow at a distance of several miles. We planned to reach our noon rest place early, and order food and provender (which it always takes an hour to cook) in advance, so that all might be ready on their arrival and a speedy departure insured. The day was a very fine one, the mountain air exhilarating and delightful, and there were no sightseers, so that Mr. Underwood and I walked together a long distance, laughing and chatting and gathering the pretty spring flowers, of which there were many, especially the sweet-scented violets, which I was surprised to find growing thus wild in the mountains. We arrived early at the little hamlet which was our destination, and were immediately installed in the one tiny inn the place could boast.

I am not sure how much time elapsed before our loads appeared, but it was not very long, and when word was brought that they were coming my husband slipped a small revolver (our only weapon) from our traveling-bag into his pocket. I understood too little of the language to know what message he had received, but he told me that some rough fellows were coming with our party and that there might be trouble, in which case he might need the revolver. He had received a message, while on the way to the inn, that robbers had overtaken our people and were following us. It seems that as soon as we were out of sight a number of men had overtaken our loads and charged one of our mapoos with theft, saying that they had come to reclaim their stolen property. They bound his hands, took possession of our ponies and loads, and followed us to our inn. I peeped out through a crack where the door stood ajar, and saw what was not reassuring, a party of twenty or thirty country fellows, wilder and ruder looking than any I had yet seen, their hair falling in matted locks around their evil faces instead of being fastened in the usual rough top-knot, and their angry eyes fierce and bloodshot. Each carried a short stout club, and they were all shouting in angry tones at once, while our mapoo, his hands bound, my husband, the constable, soldier and helper stood in the midst of this wild throng. The tiny place seemed filled with the men and the hubbub, while the frightened villagers peeped in at the gate or over the wall; our brave chair coolies had hidden away, for which we were later extremely thankful.

The attacking party with loud and angry voices accused our mapoo of having stolen their money, a hat and a bowl; and when asked for evidence, pointed to the man’s own shabby old hat, then on his head, to a rice bowl, placed on top of the packs (he said by their hands), and to our own large and heavy bag of Korean cash, fastened and sealed just as we saw it placed on the pony’s back in the morning. They refused to release the mapoo unless these things were delivered up. Mr. Underwood told them that the hat and money were ours, but that he would go with them before a Korean magistrate and leave the whole matter to his decision, only they must unbind our mapoo. This they would not hear to and continued to insist on our giving them the money. My husband absolutely refused to do this. Meanwhile, having placed himself, with the brave little soldier at his side, in a narrow space wide enough only for two, between the wall of the compound and the house, he bade the latter cut the mapoo’s bands. The mob threatened to kill him if he did so, but he turned to Mr. Underwood and said, “Does the great man bid me cut?” and receiving the affirmative reply, he at once cut the ropes which bound the mapoo. The ruffians made a rush, but Mr. Underwood, hastily pushing the mapoo behind him, managed with the aid of the soldier at his side in that narrow place to push one man back against the others and keep them off for some time.

While his whole attention was thus engaged, however, with those in front, some of the party found a way to the rear, and coming up quietly behind, suddenly pinioned his arms back and held him helpless, while the others carried off our poor mapoo away outside the village, their voices dying away in the distance. In the awful silence that succeeded the uproar we waited what would follow. After what seemed an age of suspense they returned without the man and seized and carried off our constable. Again that fateful silence, that agonizing suspense; again another raid, and our other mapoo was dragged away. If these and our other companions had shown half the courage of the little soldier and made any effort to defend themselves and us, and especially had the chair coolies stood by us, the ruffians would very likely have been beaten off. As it was, we were practically helpless, the only question was who was to be attacked next. Mr. Underwood was very doubtful of the wisdom of producing the little revolver until the very last extremity. One by one they carried away the members of our party till only Mr. Underwood, the little soldier and I were left.

A KOREAN VILLAGE

We learned afterward that they were a set of wild men, many of them fugitives from justice, probably an organized band of robbers, into whose hands we had fallen, and the fear that lay like ice at my heart was that when all our friends and defenders were one by one removed they would carry away and murder my husband too. So I waited, scarcely breathing, for the next return. What I dreaded they did in fact propose to do, saying it was the right way to treat foreigners. They said they had robbed and killed a Japanese officer some years ago, and having never been punished, would be quite safe in treating us in a similar way. On our return to Seoul we found by inquiry that this was true, that while the government had been forced to pay a heavy indemnity, they had never been able to identify and punish the murderers. Had we been overtaken before we reached the village perhaps our fate would have been that of the Japanese; but when the affair reached this point the villagers interfered and forbade. They said they had allowed them to carry off our Korean servants and our money, but should we, foreigners, known at the palace and carrying a passport, be killed there, their village would have to bear the penalty, and we must be spared. They were only a few men, but probably people who, knowing the haunts of the criminals and able to identify them, had them to some extent in their power. The men therefore sullenly filed away, or at least most of them. One or two of the fiercest and most repulsive still hung about, and one of them walked into my room (an insult in the eyes of all Koreans) and insolently stared until my husband, entering, ordered him out.

The inn-keeper was a little man not five feet high, who did all in his power to reassure and make me comfortable, as if such a thing were possible with our poor friends in distress, if not dead, and our own fate only too uncertain. It was twenty-five English miles to the nearest magistracy, and doing our best, it would be difficult to reach it that night; but we knew that if any help was to be had for the captives it must be secured at once, aside from the fact that we had no assurance of safety with so small a party until within the walls of the yamen. So it was decided to start as soon as possible. My scared chair coolies had sneaked out of their hiding places in a sufficiently well-preserved condition to be able to partake of a hearty meal, and were soon ready to start. My husband had a Korean pony which possessed the rare virtue of kicking and biting every one who attempted to touch him, except his mapoo and his master; to which quality we were indebted for his being left us that day. One other pony we were able to obtain, but as it of course could carry only our rugs and bedding, the rest of our belongings we were compelled to leave behind.

We asked the host to take them into his house and take charge of them, to which he willingly consented. His son, in an agony of terror, begged him not to do so, as the robbers had threatened to come and burn down his house if he sheltered either us or our goods. The stout-hearted little fellow, whose soul was much too large for his body, laughed at the threat, and bidding one of the very men who had attacked us give a lift, he carried our trunks into his house and said he would take good care of them for us until we should send for them. In the meanwhile Mr. Underwood had been urging me to eat, which I tried in vain to do, as a large lump of something hard had become fixed in my throat, would neither go up or down and no food could pass that way. In fact, I may as well admit I was a very much frightened woman, and my whole desire was to run away as fast and as far as possible from that dreadful locality. It sounds, and is, disgraceful, but as this is a narration of facts it may as well be confessed. My chief grief was that we must leave our poor friends behind. That, indeed, seemed cruel and unthinkable, yet there appeared to be no other way to relieve or help them.

Just as we were ready to start two or three country people came and asked for medicines for trifling complaints. Was anything ever so ill-timed? Surely we could not wait then, when the lives of our poor people as well as our own perhaps depended on our speedy departure. But not so, counseled my husband. These men and women needed help which we could give. It was our duty to show that we, as the servants of Jesus, had come in a spirit of brotherhood and love, and it gave us a fine opening to deliver a message and to distribute the printed Word—it would not take long, and in any case were we not in God’s hands? So not knowing what moment the ruffians might return to drag us away to share the unknown fate of our attendants, perhaps death, surely torture, I prescribed. Alas! I hope none of my patients were poisoned; but with so distracted a mind did I work that it was very difficult to fix my thoughts on afflicted eyes, ears and throats, etc. At length all had been seen, the medicines repacked, when another patient appeared; again we waited, I diagnosed and prescribed and Mr. Underwood prepared the medicine; but still another and yet another appeared, till I began to think we should not be able to leave that day at all. At last, however, all were satisfied, and we started with our race with time, considerably after two o’clock.

We had twenty-five English miles to travel before we could reach the nearest magistrate, on a road leading through and over the mountains. It was wild and exceedingly beautiful, but correspondingly rough and difficult. Sometimes it was only the narrowest foot-path, running along a ledge of rocks overhanging the stream; sometimes it was almost lost among great boulders, which must be skirted or surmounted. The loveliest wild flowers were all around us, but for once they did not tempt us to linger. We had barely left the confines of the village before we saw in the road before us the prostrate and apparently inanimate body of a man, whom we soon recognized as our constable. He proved to be not dead, but simply fainting from the cruel beating he had received. He soon revived a little and begged us to hurry on for aid. He was too much exhausted and bruised to be carried on with us, unless we abandoned our purpose of reaching the magistracy that night, which it seemed for the best good of all to do; so most reluctantly we left him to the mercy of the villagers. It was a sore alternative, but otherwise help for the others would have been delayed many hours.

When we had proceeded two or three miles farther we saw a line of armed men half kneeling barring the road in front of us, with their guns aimed apparently at us. I of course concluded that my last hour had come, but we decided that to advance with no signs of fear or doubt was the only course to pursue, and found a few minutes later that our formidable-looking opponents were only some hunters waiting game that was being driven towards them by others. Our road steadily ascended, and was more and more difficult. Where it was worst I walked to relieve the tired coolies, for even with four men and a light burden it is no easy matter to carry a chair up the mountain side on a warm April afternoon. When sunset was almost due, and we had many miles yet to go, the coolies insisted on waiting for supper. I dreaded the possible necessity of being obliged to spend a part of the night unsheltered in a country that seemed so hostile, added to which the other thought of the necessity for speed made it seem impossible and wicked to delay for such a paltry thing as food.

Why the men who had seemed so bitter and cruel at noon had not followed and attacked our weakened party I have never been able to entirely explain. I can only surmise that, like most Asiatics, they were firmly convinced that Mr. Underwood, in common with all foreigners, always went heavily though secretly armed, and that any attempt to injure our persons would result in awful calamity. In addition, our passport and the well-known fact that we were on very friendly relations with the palace may have made them fear the consequence of harming us, even though they were more than half resolved to do so. More than this, the villagers who forbade them to touch us probably knew their haunts and would be able to hunt them out; and lastly, the fact that Mr. Underwood stoutly resisted them and showed no signs of fear undoubtedly had a marked effect upon their treatment of us. Witness the fact that even the little soldier, the only man of our native party who fought them and showed no fear, was the only one of the Koreans who escaped unhurt. If we had at any moment shown ourselves afraid of them they would have taken it as sure proof that we were defenseless. Had they seen our little revolver, and known it for our only weapon, they would have counted us, as we were, practically helpless, and our fate might have been decided very differently.

At the time I felt certain they were not through with us, but having weakened our party, they would attack us in the lonely road, far away from the friendly village, and finish their work.

We could scarcely hope to distance them, handicapped as we were, but I felt we could not put too much space between them and us, and many a backward glance I cast, expecting to see them emerge any moment from some rock or tree. Good for man or woman it is to feel one’s self cast utterly on God’s mercy, and entirely in his hands, to know one’s self beyond all human aid, with him alone to look to for succor. As I turned to my husband that day and said, “Well, there’s nothing left to do but to trust the Lord,” it flashed over us both how commonly we only trust him when there is nothing else to do, as if his help were the last we should ever invoke, a last forlorn hope. How far, far too much, we fall into the habit of trusting in an arm of flesh and all the frail little human makeshifts with which we encompass ourselves and fancy we are safe. But how near he seems, how strong the uplift of the “everlasting arms,” when the soul is left alone to him.

We were forced to wait some time while our tired coolies fed, the darkness meanwhile coming on rapidly. At length, rather than waste any more time, I started, walking in advance and leaving the coolies to follow; eat I could not. Soon the road divided into two, one a short cut over the mountain, the other a much longer one around it; we decided to take the shorter road, which also leading through the woods became extremely dark, so that in a short time we were obliged to call for torches, the road too turning out to be very bad. It was barely a foothold, circling and twisting down the precipitous mountain side. Mr. Underwood soon concluded that he would rather trust his own feet than his pony’s, as we heard the displaced stones go rattling down into depths far below; but as for me, though I would have much preferred to descend from my chair, which had some time before overtaken us, I was now so tired that it would have delayed us too much and added nothing to my safety.

Still it was rather an uncomfortable thing to be carried along on the brink of a precipice, down a slippery, uncertain path, in a darkness which was scarcely relieved, only made visible, by the flickering torchlights, especially as they invariably burned out before the next came up, and we were obliged at times to proceed a quarter of a mile or more—it always seemed more—in total darkness; and yet worse than this is probably often experienced by people traveling in the mountains for pleasure. At last, however, after nine o’clock, Mr. Underwood came to the chair and bade me look up. There above us on a hill in relief against the starlit sky stood the walls and gate of the little city. A city of refuge indeed, and we realized that night, a little at least, of the joy of the hunted, who, closely pursued by the avenger of blood, found himself safe within protecting walls. The gates were hospitably open as our messenger had arrived, and we were expected.

We were told that it was a custom in many towns in the north to set a lamp in each doorway as a token of welcome to expected guests who for any reason were persons of importance. As we passed down the street and saw these bright little beacons before each door our hearts were deeply touched. Although it was too late for a formal audience, and the gate of the magistracy was closed, my husband insisted on being admitted at once. The request was granted and he hurried in and began the usual ceremony of introducing himself, when a familiar voice exclaimed, “And don’t you know me?” Then for the first he looked closely into the face of the official before him, and found that he was an old friend from Seoul, who had often been entertained at our house.

All was now easy. The events of the morning were carefully related, with the request that the police should be sent at once to rescue and bring back our people, reclaim our goods and arrest, if possible, the criminals. This he promised to do at once, and in fulfillment, immediately ordered up the hunters, a guild of brave men who know the woods and mountains for miles around, and who fear nothing. His spokesman then called out to them in loud tones, which thrilled through the clear starlit night, the order to go at once, find and arrest the robbers, and bring safely our attendants and goods in three days’ time, or lose their heads. To which they replied in a sort of chant in a minor key that they would so arrest, reclaim, and bring back in three days’ time or would lose their heads. The last syllable long drawn, rolled, rippled, and re-echoed, seeming to die away somewhere among the stars. The condition about the loss of their heads was, of course, merely for rhetorical effect, or very likely the echo of an old custom, the address and reply being probably a form hundreds of years old. At any rate, though they returned after three days had passed, their mission not fully accomplished, there was no talk of beheading, or thought of it in any quarter.

It may be noted that not much has been told in this chapter of Christian work and its results, but it must be remembered that conditions were somewhat unfavorable. Owing to the fears of our American minister, Mr. Underwood had been forbidden to preach in the country at this time, so that his work was limited to studying the country and the people and their possibilities, laying plans for future work, examining, instructing and encouraging converts and supervising and testing the work of native helpers. As for me, the effort to make a favorable impression through the treatment of the sick and the distribution of tracts was the limit of my usefulness.

CHAPTER V

Our Stay in Wewon—We Give a Dinner—Our Guests—Magistrates Propose that we Travel with a Chain-Gang—Our Trip down the Yalu—The Rapids—Contrast between Korean and Chinese Shores—We Enter Weju—The Drunken Magistrate—Presents and Punishments—Unpleasant Experiences with Insincere People—Rice Christians—The Scheming Colporter—The Men Baptized in Weju—The Lost Passport—Another Audience at the Palace—Queen’s Dress and Ornaments—Korean Summer House—The Pocket Dictionary—Our Homes.

Here, then, in the hospitable little town of Wewon we rested, made friends whom we hoped to draw into the friendship of our Leader, and ministered to sick bodies and souls, as opportunity was given. Here in a few days were brought our boxes and a few of the men who had attacked us. Still later, for they were unable to travel for some time, came our poor attendants, who had twice been cruelly beaten with clubs and left tied up all night in a painful and agonizing position. The mapoo’s arm was broken, and our helper never entirely recovered from the injury his back had suffered. Those of the criminals who were found were sent up to the provincial capital to be punished by the governor.

Before leaving Wewon we gave a dinner to the magistrate in order to gratify his curiosity and that of his friends. We wished to show in some way our appreciation of his kindness and hospitality, and Mr. Underwood, who had considerable experience and much skill in camp and bachelor cooking, undertook, in the face of some odds, to manage the matter; and we found our ingenuity well taxed in evolving a feast from the now scanty remnants of our larder and the few obtainable native articles out of which a foreign meal could be manufactured. However, we prided ourselves that we did quite well, with some six courses, including soup, fish, a bewitching little roast pig, well decorated with wreaths and berries, served with apple sauce and stuffed with potatoes, chestnuts and onions. Our dessert, marmalade spread on crackers, was sufficiently light to please the most æsthetic, and we introduced a novelty, coffee sweetened with honey, never whispering that our sugar was gone. The magistrate came with a huge crowd of retainers, who filled our tiny room and flowed over into the kitchen, peered into and fingered everything, and nearly wrecked the courses, which our overtried servant was attempting under many difficulties to serve. With nothing but a bowl of charcoal in lieu of a stove, and no proper kitchen utensils, it was by no means easy to achieve such a feat of culinary art in the far interior of the hermit kingdom, but we did not stop to consider a little inconvenience or bother, nor regret a little extra work where we could thereby make or strengthen friendship with Koreans. Trifling as it may look for missionaries to be planning menus and giving dinners to country magistrates, there are more ways of furthering the cause than preaching only. The hearts of the people must be won, and he who wins most friends wins the readiest and most attentive audience, one inclined in advance to favor and accept what he has to teach, and nothing is trifling which helps.

After the return of our men and belongings, and as soon as the former were able to travel, we felt we must hurry on to Weju. The magistrate of Wewon proposed that when we departed, the eight criminals who had been captured should be chained together, two and two, and led in advance of our company during the rest of our journey. Thus should we march through the land like conquerors, instilling awe and terror in all hearts, and none who looked on this tableau would ever again dare assail a foreigner. Now this was of course exactly the impression that we wished to produce as missionaries! We pictured ourselves going about preaching the cross, with such an object lesson as this, trying to win the hearts of the people, while driving their compatriots before us in chains, and we enjoyed the vision hugely. It would hardly have been possible to have obtained the relief of our Koreans without the arrest of the criminals, several of whom were identified as notorious men, whose seizure was necessary to the peace and safety of the community. But we never would have had them punished on our own account or to gratify revenge, so we politely thanked the magistrate for his tactful suggestion, but begged to be excused.

We found the town of Chosan, where we stopped on the evening after leaving Wewon, quite a unique and interesting little place. It is situated near the Yalu, or, as the Chinese call it, the Amno River, which forms the boundary line between Korea and China. Two “kisus,” a sort of soldier police, were sent out three miles to meet us, and preceded us into the town, blowing trumpets all the way, to our helpless annoyance and disgust, for they either could not or would not understand that this sort of demonstration was most distasteful to us both.

As at Kangai, more and more soldiers met us at intervals. There were flags, music, crowds, and again we entered the town like a circus. The crowds, however, were kept well back, the place was much smaller, and we were undisturbed at the magistracy. As soon as we entered the house a small tray was brought, with cups of hot ginger tea, most restful and refreshing, the kind thought of the magistrate, who, unlike others, did not force himself at once upon us, but considerately waited until we were a little rested and refreshed. We found here a custom which we had not met elsewhere, that of sounding a bell every morning at a certain hour, when all morning fires must be extinguished, not to be relit until late in the afternoon.

We were compelled to go on some miles farther to obtain a boat for our short trip down the Yalu. In rainy weather the rapids between this point and Weju are rather dangerous, but at this time it was only a swift current, which made the trip the pleasanter. We found a Korean junk, which served our purpose as well as any that were to be had, which was flat-bottomed, and thirty feet long by three wide. This would carry our attendants, our packs, two or three boatmen and ourselves. Some mats were rigged on bamboo poles above us for an awning, and others stretched across the middle of the boat for a partition, which left one half for the use of the natives, while we reserved the other for ourselves. Here we spent three days and nights; during the latter, however, we always anchored near the shore. Provisions in plenty were obtained from the villages we passed, when a great many people came out to kugung; but here we had the advantage, and while quite able to talk to them from the boat, were not forced to permit more than we liked to examine us and our belongings.

One night we were wakened with the cry of “Pull, pull!” “Fire, fire!” and found the boat was on fire. Some one had fallen asleep while smoking and dropped hot ashes among combustibles; but we were close to the shore, there was plenty of water and people to use it. The blaze was soon out, and nothing thrilling came to pass. Thus was it ever with our adventures. While danger in one form or another made itself known, as if to prove beyond a doubt our Father’s care, we were kept as safe and unharmed as a child in its mother’s arms; and were we not with the everlasting arms underneath us?

As we drifted down the Amno those lovely spring days, with China lying on one side of us and Korea on the other, the contrast was wonderfully marked, almost as much, indeed, as if the two nations had been separated by oceans rather than a river. This difference too was almost as marked in the physical features of the country as in national customs. On the Korean shore the trees were mostly of pine; on the China side, of oaks and other deciduous varieties. The Korean peasants’ huts were of mud, straw thatched; the Chinese houses of brick or stone, roofed with tile. Koreans dressed in white were plowing with oxen; Chinese farmers in blue were plowing with horses. Rhododendrons gave a lovely roseate tinge to the rocks and hills on either side. It was easy for the passing traveler to see which country bore the greater appearance of prosperity and thrift.

On the evening of the 27th of April we reached Weju. Fortunately no official notice had gone before, and there were no trumpets, drums, harps, sackbuts, psalteries and all kinds of music at hand to make our lives a burden. A chair was hired for Mr. Underwood, and in the kindly protection of the deepening twilight we surreptitiously entered these conveyances and were carried into the city as quietly and unobtrusively as happy common folks.

And now, to return a little, soon after leaving Pyeng Yang we had met a Mr. Yi, of Weju, an agent of the Bible Society, then on his way to Seoul; but when he heard where we were going he concluded to return with us. Mr. Underwood was at that time trying to decide whether Weju or Pyeng Yang would be the better place for a sub-station, with a half-formed plan to purchase a house, to which we could go when itinerating, in charge of which we might place a care-taker, who would also be helper, intending to select from among the converts in that region, if possible, one of the most capable and earnest. This plan was in part communicated to Mr. Yi, and seemed to strike him most favorably. He shortly proposed to precede us to Weju and select such a place. Mr. Underwood, however, told him plainly that he must on no account purchase or promise to purchase any such house for us; that, as our plans were indefinite, we could not buy until we had seen the city and the Christians, and, in a word, until we had some data by which to decide whether we needed such a house there at all. And even then the locality and the house must first be seen by us.

We, however, consented that he should go in advance and arrange at some inn or Christian home for our entertainment, so that we could be quietly and quickly housed on entering the town. We also consented that some inquiries should be made as to what houses in localities convenient for work were purchasable, and at what price, so that we might have something definite to consider on reaching there. Accordingly he left us before we reached Kangai and hurried on to Weju. When we arrived, therefore, he met us and conducted us with much éclat to a very commodious and nice bungalow, which he said was his own. Here we were introduced to his consumptive wife, his aged father, and his little children.

According to custom, we sent our passport to the magistrate as soon as we arrived. This scarcely reached his office before an order was sent out for the arrest of our servants and helper, who were forthwith dragged off to the yamen, beaten and locked up. We had hardly received this disconcerting news when it was announced that some messengers had arrived from his excellency with a very generous present of chickens, eggs, nuts, fruit and other edibles. These articles again had barely been received and the messengers not well out of sight when officers arrived with orders to arrest our host and have him beaten. This very contradictory conduct was certainly disquieting, and we were at a loss to conjecture what it meant.

A BUTCHER SHOP

BASKET SHOP

However, we had not long to wait. The deputy or vice-magistrate was shortly afterwards announced, and before he left, he gave Mr. Underwood to understand that his honor the magistrate had been imbibing rather freely and was not altogether responsible for his honorable (?) conduct, and that he, the deputy, hoped, therefore, that we would overlook his slight playfulness in arresting and beating our poor innocent people. These little aberrations were, he said, quite frequent, and of course when once we understood what was to be expected and the reason, no concern need be felt. We were, of course, immensely comforted and soothed by this explanation, and rested with quiet minds in the happy consciousness that it was entirely uncertain what sort of magisterial and honorable earthquake or cyclone might strike us next; assured it would be all right, as he intended no harm in his sane moments. The poor deputy, in a strait betwixt two (the magistrate near at hand, and the Foreign Office in Seoul, represented by our passport), had been trying to smooth over the magistrate’s uncivil reception of the passported foreigners, by offerings of said chickens, eggs, etc., and this was the explanation of the strange combination of presents and punishments.

Drunkenness is, I am sorry to say, very common in Korea. The people do not, as in Japan and China, raise tea, and even the wealthiest have apparently only recently learned the use of either tea or coffee, which the common people are far too poor to buy. Milk, strange to say, they have never used, and they are therefore without a harmless beverage which they can offer their friends on convivial occasions. As it is, they resort only too generally to wines and some very strong alcoholic drinks, which they make themselves.

We had had Christian workers at Weju for some months, one of whom Mr. Underwood had appointed and two who had constituted themselves such, of whom we were doubtful then, and later had cause to be more so, and who now hoped to prove themselves so useful to us that we would give them some good-paying position in the mission. Several of our experiences at Weju were very bitter and disappointing to us, for the insincerity of men whom we trusted was made clear, and yet at the same time they were instructive, for they taught us to be very slow and cautious in investing men with responsibility, and to be very guarded both in receiving converts and in using money, and helped to strengthen us in those ideas of rigid self-support which Mr. Underwood had already, from the study of Dr. Nevius’ book, begun to consider deeply and to some extent follow. One of the self-appointed begged us to start a Christian school in a place where as yet there was no opening for it, and to put him in as teacher with a good salary. “But,” Mr. Underwood objected, “we are not yet ready for such a school, and I cannot start a school merely to give you a living.” Such unconcern for his material interest grieved him sorely. Long he pleaded his need and begged with great naïveté that we would then inform him how he was to subsist, with refreshing guilelessness rolling the whole of the responsibility of his existence upon us. We were obliged to tell him with some emphasis that we were not here to provide incomes for indolent men, but to further the gospel.

Another man whom we had trusted had given us altogether exaggerated, and we feared intentionally false, accounts of the interest in Kangai, of which we had failed to find any signs. He did not suppose we would go there to verify the reports which were to accrue to his credit. But another and still more annoying experience awaited us. The agent Yi told us that the house we were in belonged to us, that in spite of our repeated injunctions he had bought it for us, and had sold his own little home in part payment and installed his family here. This was now the only shelter of his aged father, his sick wife and his helpless little ones. The scheming fellow had indeed placed us in a serious predicament. To turn these weak and helpless people into the street for the sins of this man was not to be thought of; to allow the man to profit by his dishonest trick would be to encourage every covetous hypocrite who sought to make gain out of the church and to misuse consecrated funds. Fortunately within ten days after a sale the money or deeds may be demanded back, and so we made him ask back his own house and return the one we had used, with a slight extra payment, to the original owner. It is due to the British Bible Society to say that they were of course deceived in this man, as we are all liable to be at times, no matter how careful. The distance from his employers at which he was working made supervision almost impossible.

We were visited by a great many people, mostly men, who seemed deeply interested in Christianity and eager for baptism. Over one hundred such applicants presented themselves. Mr. Underwood examined them with great care, and found that all had studied the Scriptures and tracts with great assiduity, and nearly all were well informed in the cardinal truths of the gospel. One man was quite a phenomenon of a rather useless kind of Biblical erudition. He knew the number of chapters and verses in the Old and New Testament (Chinese, of course), the number of characters, the number of times the name of God and Christ occur, and a variety of similar facts, showing he had an extremely facile memory, but proving nothing with regard to his conversion. I could not help regarding the poor man with compassion. It seemed too bad that he should have taken so much pains and spent so many hours of toil to gain non-essentials when the sweet bread of life and honey out of the rock might have been had so simply and easily, had he only really wanted them, had he learned enough of their wondrous value to desire them. I am afraid that this man and some of the others that we questioned had no inkling of what Christianity really is, but supposed it was a philosophy, fine and good, no doubt, which if adopted would bring them in touch with rich and influential foreigners, and find them speedy employment as teachers, helpers and what not.

What we anxiously, longingly sought for in these applicants were the signs of a sincere change of heart, of a real love for the God who was crucified to save them, and of the fruit of this belief in a change of life and character. Out of the hundred applicants we selected thirty-three, not those who answered most glibly or showed the greatest information, but those who gave almost unmistakable evidence of sincerity of heart and true knowledge of Jesus. I say almost, for it is well-nigh impossible not to make mistakes at times.

We had been forbidden to baptize in Korea, under our passport, and we all crossed the river into China, and there held a communion service, a very solemn and deeply felt occasion to us, and Mr. Underwood baptized these men, the only ones baptized during the whole trip, a larger number than he ever received before, or after that, for some years. These numbers, rather large so early in the history of the mission, were afterward much exaggerated by rumor. No one was able to visit this little company of newborn souls for two years. No response from the church at home to urgent pleas for help; exacting demands of work in Seoul, sickness which took us to America, made it impossible for any one to go and strengthen, encourage and uphold them. With no pastor, few books but Chinese, they were sadly neglected, and humanly speaking, it would hardly be surprising if they were scattered and lost as sheep without a shepherd. We had hoped to visit them at least once a year, but had no idea how the work near home would grow and how impossible it would be to leave. These men were not of the city of Weju, but from some little hamlets at some distance, some of them fifteen or twenty miles away. Several of the men were already well known to Mr. Underwood and had been under instruction for more than a year, and some had been reported ready for baptism by Mr. Saw, who had been employed by Mr. Ross when he came to Seoul three years before.

This is to show that a horde of new professors, of whom we knew nothing, were not rashly baptized in zeal to increase the list of church-members, as was stated by persons who were ignorant of the real facts. All were rigidly examined, all had been long prepared, and although two missionaries who paid a visit to Weju on their way to China two years later, and one who made a long stay eight or nine years later, said they found none of these Christians, we believe God was able to keep his own. It would not be easy, knowing neither the names of the men nor the villages where they lived, to find them, especially when we remember the roving, almost nomadic character of the people, most of whom had probably moved quite away, the Japanese war having worked marvelous changes. More than half of the population of Weju and vicinity seemed to melt away during that disastrous war.

When our work in Weju was done we started on our return trip to many waiting duties in the capital. The magistrate had not restored our passport, so we sent for it, but it was not forthcoming. We waited some time, and again meekly requested it; still it was withheld, and at length we learned that on the night of our arrival the magistrate had been in such an irresponsible condition that he had no recollection to whose care he had confided it, and, in fact, the passport was lost. This was indeed a serious state of affairs! To travel without one would involve great risk, to wait for another from Seoul would take more time than we could afford to spare. And, indeed, whether we should believe that it was really lost, or that this was only the excuse of an inimical magistrate who meant to detain us there for some dark purpose, was a question. After some annoying delay, however, it was found and duly returned, and with sad farewells from our friends, but with the hope and intention of returning soon to feed these lambs of God’s fold we left Weju, to which we have never as yet been permitted to go back.

Mr. Underwood and I discussed long and earnestly on our return trip the comparative merits of Pyeng Yang and Weju for the establishment of a sub-station. In the one the opening was more hopeful, the other held the more advantageous position. We at length concluded to leave the matter open and allow future events to decide where we should start our station. We returned to Seoul by the main road, with as few delays as possible, and had an uneventful trip, troubled by no mobs or robbers. The season was somewhat advanced and the inns were very hot, but the country was beautiful, with many varieties of the loveliest flowers. Lilies of the valley we found growing in masses not ten feet from the roadside, lilacs, eglantine, sweet violets and quantities of other sweet-scented flowers filled my chair. We found ourselves safely at home near the middle of May, having been absent over two months, traveled more than a thousand miles, treated over six hundred patients, and talked with many times that number.

We were dismayed to find on our return that one of the too loyal missionaries had, in supposed obedience to the edict, closed the little room, where services had been held with the natives, and they were worshiping secretly in one or another of their own little homes. We at once threw open our own house and regularly gathered the Christians there, till all the mission were willing to use the little chapel again.

Shortly after our return the queen invited me to a private audience, in order to give me a very unique pair of gold bracelets, which she had ordered made for a wedding present, and which had not been ready before we went to the country. She also gave a ring set with a beautiful pearl for my husband. She kindly asked about our trip, and was, as usual, all that was friendly and considerate. I wish I could give the public a true picture of the queen as she appeared at her best, but this would be impossible, even had she permitted a photograph to be taken, for her charming play of expression while in conversation, the character and intellect which were then revealed, were only half seen when the face was in repose. She wore her hair like all Korean ladies, parted in the center, drawn tightly and very smoothly away from the face and knotted rather low at the back of the head. A small ornament (indicating her rank, I suppose, as I have never seen any other woman wear one) was worn on the top of the head; fastened by a narrow black band. One or two very ornamental long hairpins of gold filigree set with coral, pearls or jewels were stuck through the knot of hair at the back. She usually wore a yellow silk chogerie, or jacket waist, like those worn by all Korean women, fastened with a pearl or amber button and a very long flowing blue silk skirt. All her garments were of silk, exquisitely dainty.

Her majesty seemed to care little for ornaments, and wore very few. No Korean women wear earrings (except young girls in the north, who wear a large silver hoop), and the queen was no exception, nor have I ever seen her wear a necklace, a brooch, or a bracelet. She must have had many rings, but I never saw her wear more than one or two of European manufacture, set with not so many nor so large diamonds as numbers of American women of moderate means and station often display. She had any number of beautiful watches, which she never wore. According to Korean custom, she carried a number of filigree gold ornaments decorated with long silk tassels fastened at her side. So simple, so perfectly refined were all her tastes in dress, it is difficult to think of her as belonging to a nation called half civilized.

On the occasion of this visit she gave me a fresh proof of her thoughtful kindness. I was wearing my wedding dress and very thin satin slippers, and as I was leaving it suddenly began to rain. My chair was nearly half a mile distant, waiting outside the gate, according to rule. The queen, whom nothing escaped, noted the rain, and my difficulty. She came in person to the window and imperatively ordered word to be sent to the gate for my chair to be brought to the waiting room.

PLEASURE HOUSE. [PAGE 22]

But this was too much. The officials who attended me there said that such an exception as this in my favor would awaken bitter criticism and jealousy, that one of the highest officials in the land was at that moment waiting at the gate for the shower to pass so that he could attend at an audience, and would be obliged to walk through the rain. They therefore begged that I would wave the fulfilment of the queen’s order and walk to my chair. I saw the reason and the good sense in their protest, and of course at once consented, as much comforted by the queen’s kind intention as if my slippers and silk gown had been well protected. This rule for the exclusion of chair coolies was changed soon after, and my chair was brought close to the royal apartments.

That summer was passed on a high bluff on the banks of the river, in a Korean summer house, which belonged to the king, which their majesties had allowed our mission to use a previous year, and which favor was now extended to us. It was situated on the rocks about fifty feet above the water, and was one of those charming, cool and picturesque summer refuges which Koreans understand building to perfection. Its roof, with artistically upward curving corners, was supported on several stout pillars, but its walls were all windows of light wood, in fancy open-work designs, which were covered with paper on one side, and which, being made to swing out and hook to the roof, formed a very effective awning. Here with a breeze always sweeping through, effectively screened from the sun, with a perfect view of the mountains and the Han River, with its lovely green valley, Mr. Underwood worked nearly all summer on his small dictionary, Mr. Gale or Mr. Hulbert giving him much useful help at times. My husband had been at work on a larger dictionary, which he planned to make a very full and complete one, for nearly three years, and had already many thousands of definitions of words with synonyms. It was to be both Korean-English and English-Korean, not like the French, merely the Korean into the foreign tongue. It was a darling scheme of his heart, on which he was putting all the time that could be spared from direct mission work; but persuaded by his brethren that something was sorely needed immediately by missionaries now beginning to arrive, he laid his magnum opus aside for the present, not without regret, but without a backward look, and working without cessation from early dawn into the night hours all that long summer, prepared and finished the small dictionary, for the convenience at the present indigent moment of those who were struggling with the language.

The following fall, the loved secretary, Dr. Mitchell, and Mrs. Mitchell visited our mission and gave us all much advice and help, for which we were most grateful. We were not then quite so well housed as now. Our homes were mud-walled and rather damp, often leaking badly in rainy season and admitting much frosty air through numerous cracks in the winter. Many of our windows were not glazed, but merely covered with paper. During the doctor’s visit there came one night a heavy storm of wind and rain, which beat against the window near our bed, and thoroughly demolished it, the rain pouring in on the floor. The roof leaked over us, but with umbrellas and waterproofs we kept quite dry. In the morning, however, at the sight of the flooded floor and the paper windows hanging in shreds, Dr. Mitchell gave us a severe reprimand for our carelessness, warning us that missionaries are far too expensive commodities to be so ill protected. A lesson it were well for all young missionaries to learn, but which, as a rule, alas! they are too slow to heed.

CHAPTER VI

An Audience at the Palace—Dancing Girls—Entertainment Given after the Audience—Printing the Dictionary and Grammar—A Korean in Japan—Fasting to Feast—Death of Mr. Davies—Dr. Heron’s Sickness—Mrs. Heron’s Midnight Ride—Dr. Heron’s Death—Difficulty in Getting a Cemetery Concession—Forced Return to America—Compensations—Chemulpo in Summer—The “Term Question” in China, Korea and Japan—Difficulties in the Work.

Early in the fall of 1889 I was invited to another audience at the palace, with some of the foreign state officials and their wives. After the audience a dinner was served, and later, a performance by dancing girls was given. And right here I must say, that although on several occasions at the palace I have seen dancing girls in these entertainments, I have never beheld anything at such times in their actions that was improper or even undignified. Their motions are graceful, usually slow, circling around hand in hand or in various combinations of pretty figures. They wear high-necked and long-sleeved jackets or coats, and long skirts, the figure quite concealed by the fashion of the dress. And yet, thus to appear in public, allowing their faces to be seen by strangers, is the gravest breach of propriety in the eyes of all Koreans, and these girls are, alas! as depraved as women can be. Like those of their class in all countries, they are the most pitiable and hopeless of women, but unlike those who have thrown themselves away, they deserve small blame mixed with the compassion one feels for them, for these poor girls have been sold by their parents into their awful lives, and were given no choice of their destiny. Many a poor little Korean child is sold into slavery for a few bags of rice, to be trained as a dancing girl, used as a common drudge, or married to a man she has never seen, while she is hardly larger than our little ones playing with their dolls in the nursery.

But to return to our palace entertainment, from which I have made a rather long digression. The guests were seated on the veranda, or “maru,” in front of the dining hall, and in the grounds before us appeared a pretty boat with wide spread sails, in which were seated some gaily dressed girls. Others now appeared, dancing to slow native music, a stately figure, almost in minuet fashion, with waving of flowing sleeves and banners. They were evidently the spirits of the wind, and the boat was waiting the favoring breeze. The music grew quicker, while faster and faster stepped the dancers, more and more swiftly fanning the sails with sleeves, skirts and scarfs, till at last the boat slowly moved forward, and with its attendants moved out of sight. When the boat had been thus gracefully fanned away, a couple of mammoth lotus plants were brought out, with great closed blossoms seen among the leaves.

Following them came a pair of gigantic storks, extremely well simulated. The birds came forward slowly, advancing, retreating, sideling, mincing, waiving their heads and long bills about, all in tune to the music, wavering and uncertain, yet evidently with some definite, not to be resisted, purpose in mind. At length, after long hesitation, one of them plucked up courage and gave a vigorous peck at a lotus bud, which forthwith burst open and released a pretty little child, who had been curled up at its heart. The other stork, with similar good fortune, discovered another little one. I was much interested to find this stork and baby myth here in Korea, centuries old; but those hoary nations of the East are ever reaching down into the apparently limitless depths of their remote past, and dragging forth some fresh surprise whereby to convince us there is nothing new under the sun.

Late in November of the same year we went to Japan to publish Mr. Underwood’s grammar and dictionary, as there were no means of printing such books in Seoul. In Japan we were forced to wait while type was made, and during this delay Mr. Underwood perfected the grammar, adding what is now the first part. A Korean teacher or scholar accompanied us, but great was his distaste for Japan and all her ways, and herculean our toils and efforts, as each steamer sailed to prevent his returning to Korea.

Rice is the staple article of food in China, Korea and Japan, but it is cooked and eaten differently in all three countries, and no one of either will, except under dire necessity, eat the rice prepared by one of the other nationalities. Our literary assistant was of the Yangban, or noble class, he had never soiled his hands in labor, or cooked anything for himself, but after enduring a Japanese hotel with many and doleful complaints for a very short time, he begged us to find him a room and let him keep house for himself. That a Yangban should make a proposition like this showed to what straits he had been brought, so we at once complied with his request, and from that time on he prepared his rice with his own gentlemanly hands. He was a Chinese scholar of fine attainments, and his learning was much respected in high Japanese circles. He was often invited out, and was distinguished by an invitation to the house of the governor of the city.

Now, when Koreans attend a feast, they expect to finish an incredible amount of food on the spot (nor is it altogether unusual, in addition, to carry away as much in their sleeves and hands as strength will permit). Sometimes they fast for several days previous in order to do full justice to the entertainment, and generally, I believe, quantity is considered of far more import than quality. Not so with the Japanese, among whom our teacher visited. If his word was to be believed, they had developed the æsthetic idea quite to the other extreme, and provided a few tiny cups and dishes of supposedly delicate and rare viands for their guests. So on this occasion to which I refer, it was almost pathetic, the poor Korean fasting to feast, with visions of quarts of rice and vermicelli soup, pounds of hot rice bread, nuts, fruits, fresh, dried and candied; meats with plenty of hot sauce, “kimchi,” or sauerkraut, etc., etc. Alack the day! A few microscopic cups of tea, a few tiny dishes of articles which knew not Korea (among them no doubt raw fish), and for the rest, a feast of reason and flow of soul. Next day, a wiser and a thinner man, he sadly told Mr. Underwood that he now understood why Japanese prospered, while Koreans grew poor. “Koreans,” said he, “earn a hundred cash a day and eat a thousand cash worth, while Japanese, on the contrary, earn a thousand cash a day and eat a hundred cash worth.” Never were truer words spoken, with regard to the Japanese at least. If these people have a virtue, which their worst enemies cannot gainsay, it is their industry and thrift.

Just what is the ordinary number of slight earthquakes in Japan per month or year, I do not know, but during the six months of our stay they averaged one every three days. During one twenty-four hours of our experience there were eleven. They were not, of course, severe, but sufficient to swing doors, set chandeliers clattering and rocking chairs in motion,, and to convince me more than once that the house was on the point of tumbling about our ears.

Just before we returned to Korea we were shocked to hear of the sudden death by smallpox of Rev. Mr. Davies, a brother greatly beloved in the Lord, who had arrived early the previous summer and had made phenomenal progress in the language, whose gifts and learning were unusual, but were all excelled by his spirituality and consecration. His zeal never permitted him to spare himself in the least. He seemed to link himself at once, heart to heart, with Mr. Underwood, and together they planned, studied, worked and prayed for the salvation of the people. It was as if death had entered our own family when news came of his loss, and a black pall seemed to lie across our path. We knew God does all things well, and his ways are not our ways, nor his thoughts ours, and yet in the weakness of the flesh, which cannot see, with all those unsaved millions dying around us, we felt we could not spare Mr. Davies, and to us, to whom he had been confidant, sympathizer, counselor and friend, the personal loss was bitter. But we have learned that often when we think, or come in any way to feel that his cause depends on a man, God removes him, to teach us that his cause depends on no man, that he can bless the efforts of the weakest and poorest and feed five thousand from the basket of a little boy.

On April 26, 1890, the books were finished, and we started at once for Korea, reaching here in May. Soon after our return from Japan we were visited by Dr. and Mrs. Nevius. We all recognized Dr. Nevius as a king among men, with a mind so clear and broad, a spirit so genial, a heart so full of charity and with a record of such long years of faithful labor that we were glad to sit at his feet. The sense of ignorance, incompetence, inexperience, combined with a realization of awful responsibility, is almost overwhelming to the young missionary on a new field, and it is only by constantly leaning on the almighty arm that he is kept from despondence and despair. At such times the advice of such an elder brother is invaluable.

The little missions had by this time been reinforced by several arrivals, and the following summer, which was very warm, many of them went to Namhan (Southern fortress) to spend the hot months. Seoul lies in a basin, encircled by mountains, and is extremely unhealthy in summer, its festering pools and ditches overflowing with filth, steaming a very witches brew of evils upon the sickened air, with odors unspeakable and undreamed of in civilized lands. Namhan is about seventeen miles distant from Seoul, on top of a mountain, not quite two thousand feet high. It lies on the further side of the Han River, but is fairly easy of access, reached by a steep road winding up the mountain.

Dr. Heron had taken his family there, and frequently traveled back and forth to his duties in Seoul, which was doubtless too much for his strength in those hot and humid days. He was soon attacked by dysentery, which did not at first seem serious, and was consequently ignored too long. It finally developed into the most malignant form of the disease, which resisted every effort of the physicians, Drs. Scranton and MacGill, who were unremitting in the struggle in which they were steadily worsted. As soon as the symptoms began to look grave Mrs. Heron was sent for. In great distress and alarm, she set off that very evening, in a terrible storm of rain and wind, a very carnival, no torch or lantern could be kept alive, the wind howling around the frail chair as if to tear it from its bearers’ hands. The roads, steep and difficult in pleasant weather, were really dangerous when slippery with mud and water, in darkness so absolute that not one step in advance could be seen, while in the woods and valleys the coolies were sometimes up to their waists in water. Drenched to the skin, this poor afflicted young wife arrived at her home near morning, after traveling all night in this terrible storm, to find her husband fatally ill. After a little more than three weeks’ sickness and great suffering, Dr. Heron passed away, to the grief and loss of the whole foreign community, as well as that of the Koreans (and they were many) with whom he had come in contact, to all of whom he had endeared himself by untiring kindness.

GATE IN THE WALL OF NAMHAN. [PAGE 98]

The government had never set aside any land for a foreign cemetery near Seoul, although in accordance with the treaty they should have done so long before. A strong superstition and very rigid law forbid the burial of the dead within the city walls, and hitherto the few Europeans who had died had been buried in the cemetery near Chemulpo. But to carry remains thirty miles in the heat of July, to the port, with no conveyances but chairs, to be forced to bury our dead so far away, was unnecessary, inconvenient and expensive, as well as an additional trial to hearts already sore. As soon, therefore, as Dr. Heron’s death seemed inevitable, a request was made that the government would set apart a place near the city for this purpose. This, with characteristic procrastination, they failed to do.

On the day of Dr. Heron’s death they offered a place which we found altogether impossible, beyond the sand beds across the river, a long distance off, in very low ground. It was then decided that as something immediate must be done, we would make a temporary resting place on a piece of ground belonging to our mission, where there was a small house, occupied just then by Mr. Underwood’s and Dr. Heron’s literary helpers. As soon as they heard of this plan they objected most strongly, saying it was against the law, and as the body must be carried through the streets to reach there, there would probably be a good deal of excitement and trouble.

We then ordered the grave dug on Dr. Heron’s compound, back of his house, sending word to the Foreign Office that as they had provided no other place, we were forced temporarily at least to make this disposal of the remains. The time for the funeral was set for three o’clock, and about a half hour before the literary helpers again came to us in a state of the wildest excitement and terror, tearing their hair, weeping and trembling. They averred that the people in that quarter were planning to mob us all, to burn down their house, beat and kill them, and very likely kill us too, if the body was buried within the walls.

It seemed cruel that no place could be found where we could lay our dead. Our hearts were torn with grief for the poor burdened sister, who ought to have been able to claim a quiet and decent burial for her dear one’s remains, as well as the sympathy of every one, that she must be refused a place for his repose, and assailed by all this wrangling and confusion. We were hotly indignant with the teachers, who we thought ought to have risen above heathen superstition on their own part and kept the secret from the people. It was now uncertain where Dr. Heron’s remains could be laid, and they were therefore embalmed and hermetically sealed. The Foreign Office, however, on hearing that it was our intention to bury on the compound, at once came to terms and gave us a large field on a fine bluff overlooking the river, about five miles from Seoul. This was obtained through the indefatigable efforts of Dr. Allen of the United States legation, who besieged the foreign office and insisted on this concession.

During all these months the work was steadily going forward; more than we had dared to hope were added to the number of believers and inquirers; a Bible translating committee, of which Dr. W. B. Scranton of the M. E. Mission and Mr. Underwood were members, had been appointed; a girls’ school in each of the two missions had been started long before, and both were steadily growing (though the Methodists were far in advance here), the boys’ orphanage had been changed to a boys’ school, and hospital and dispensary work in both missions was flourishing; with an increase of confidence of the people in our friendship and trustworthiness.