Chosön, the Land of the Morning Calm. A sketch of Korea. ... Illustrated from photographs by the author

Preface

. ONE evening in August, 1883, I found myself arriving in Tokio, after a journey into the interior of Japan. The thousand lights and lanterns of the great city, as 1 sped through its miles of streets in a jinrikisha, never seemed so brilliant nor so welcoming before. I felt I had reached home. Of leaving it, of sailing for America, I had at that moment about as much idea as you have, good reader, of set ting out to-morrow for Kamchatka. Coming eA*ents cast no shadows before them; for all was one vast shadow, — night. Pour days from that time 1 was on the broad Pacific Avith the Korean Special Mission to the United States, and a little more than two weeks later I entered my native land as a foreigner. It was at the end of October that we sailed back again from San Francisco for Yokohama. A long passage across the Pacific and un avoidable delays in Japan made it the middle of December before we at last reached Korea.

There, in its capital, Soul, as the guest of his Majesty, I spent the winter. Now that you and I, gentle reader, have journeyed so many thousand miles in company, we should surely have learned to know each other ; for nothing, we both admit, so reveals character as travel, — except marriage. I would add tAvo notes. In the first place, I Avish to put in a plea for the right pronunciation of Korean Avords. In the transliteration of tbe Korean alphabet I haA*e followed the scheme suggested by Messrs. Aston, Satow, and Chamberlain, the pioneers of the subject. The simple vowels a, i, o, and u are to be pronounced as in Italian. 0, an exceedingly interesting Korean vowel, has a sound which varies from the French e mute, through short u, to a degenerated o. The best sound, VI

PREFACE.

. on the Avhole, to represent it is the German o (o umlaut). What have been written e, e, and e were originally Korean diphthongs, and are still so written, di, ai, and oi; but they are now pronounced as single vowel sounds, akin to the sounds the letters represent in French. The transliterated consonants are to be pronounced for the most part as in English, — the principal exceptions being r, which is a general, not a special liquid (that is, it suggests either an r, an /, or an n, according to position) ; an intercalated h, which has the effect of increasing the aspiration of the preceding letter, — as, for instance, Whang, Chhung ; and lastly, a reduplication of certain letters, which simply increases the intensity of their pronunciation. Other foreign words have been spelled according to the consensus of scholars on the subject ; for this reason Korea has replaced Corea, and in Manchuria all the vowels have the Italian sound.

Secondly, I would send with this a note of thanks. The thanks Avould have taken the form of a dedication had the names not seemed too many to share one book. To William Sturgis BigeloAv, Gustavus Goward, Basil Hall Chamberlain, Ernest F. Fenollosa, and Edward S. Morse, I am indebted for kindness and help thanks cannot express : I Avould offer them instead this sketch. To Miyaoka Tsunejiro, Yu Kii Chun, Cheu Kyong Sok, Ni Si Ryom, Kim Nak Chip, Min Ycing Ik, and So Kwang Pom, I am under the greatest obligations. I would also thank most warmly Hon. Lucius A. Foote, C. L. Scudder, Esq., Herr P. G. von Mollendorff, T. Koyabashi, Esq., and Y. S. Yoshida, Esq., for the many happy days they gave me in both thought and feeling, the remembrance of Avhich has lately, unhappily, been saddened by the death of Mrs. Foote ; Avhile to Hong Yong Sik, the loyal friend, the true patriot, and at last the political martyr, I can noAv only ascribe a memory.

To the Forbes Albertype Company I desire to express my thanks for the manner in Avhich they haA*e reproduced from my nega tives the accompanying pictures. Finally, I Avould thank Mr. Stevens, of the University Press, for his many able suggestions. Boston, November, 1885. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. Where the Day Begins 1 II. The Geography or the Peninsula 11 III. The Climate 22 99 IV. The Coast 33 V. Chemulpo 41 VI. The Journey up to Soul 54 VII. The Journey up to Soul. — The Second Day .... 68 VIII. The Entry into Soul 78 IX. A Walled City 86 X. The Watch-Fires on the South Mountain 93 XI. The Goa*ernment 100 XII. The Triad of Principles 107 XIII. The Quality of Impersonality 120 XIV. The Patriarchal System 131 XV. The Position of Woman 143 XVI. Presentation at Court 153 XVII. A Day at Home 162 XVIII.

The House of the Sleeping Waves 170 XIX. The Want of a Keligion 181 XX. The Demon Worship CONTENTS. VIII CHAPTER PAGE XXI. Soul by Day 213 XXII. Soul by Night 226 XXIII. A Korean Banquet 238 XXIV. My Friend the Mathematician 250 XXV. Architecture 262 XXVI. Landscape Gardening 280 XXVII. The Palaces 289 XXVIII. A Chapter of Horrors 299 XXIX. The Valley of Clothes 307 XXX. Costume 316 XXXI. On Hats 332 XXXII. An Out-of-the-Way Corner in Language 348 XXXIII. The Flower-Stream Temple 356 XXXIV. Winter Bea-els in a Monastery 367 XXXV Time 376 XXXVI. A Predicament 386 XXXVII. The Beacons of Pusan 394 Appendix 401 Index LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FULL-PAGE PLATES. PAGE His Majesty the King of Korea Frontispiece Morning in the Old Palace Grounds 6 Korean Boats in the Harbor of Fusan 36 The River Han. — Ice Floating doavn in March - 50 River Suburbs of Soul 74 The Sa Kavan and the Colonel 84 The Audience Hall 100 The Foreign Office 116 An Uninvited Circle in one of the Principal Streets, — Soul 128 Rice Shop, — Soul 150 An Outlying Branch of the City's Wall crossing a Stream . 172 The Pagoda 188 In the Main Street, — Soul 218 Outside the Old Palace Wall, looking towards Nam San . . 232 On the Piazza of the Summer Palace 250 The Red Arrow Gate 262 The Pillars of the Palace of Summer 270 The Lotus Pond of the Palace of Summer 280 In the Neav Palace Grounds 296 Temple in the Valley of Clothes LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

X PAGE In the Valley of the Clothes-Washing 314 A Military-Hat Shop 342 Beyond the Xortheast Gate 360 " The Fragrant Iris " 372 An Apothecary's Shop 388 WOODCUTS, ETC. Family Table 139 The Chinese General and the Unfortunate Imp 196 A Tea-Fight of Gnomes 206 A Hasty Sketch drawn with a Pencil, in course of Conversation, by a Korean who was not an Artist 245 A Korean Sock 328 A Korean Shoe 328 A Korean Boot 330 The Ordinarat Every-Day Hat 336 The Scull-Cap, with the Mitre-Hat over it 337 A Court Hat 339 A Mitre-Hat, the Cue seen underneath 340 The " Chef-de-Cuisine " Hat, not. however, a Culinary Badge 340 A Large Hat 342 note The Hybrid 346 Yang 381 note Yang and Yong 381 note MAPS. Map of Korea 13 Korean Map of the World

Chapter I. Where The Day Begins

IT is fortunate that the one hundred and eightieth meridian falls Avhere it does. From Siberia to the Antarctic Con tinent this imaginary line traverses nothing but water. The only land Avhich it passes at all near is one of the archipela goes of the South Pacific ; and there it divides but a handful of A'olcanoes and coral reefs from the main group. These islands are even more unimportant to the world than insig nificant in size. Those avIio tenant them are few, and those who are bound to these few still fewer. The line is not only imaginary ; it has not even an astro nomical reason for its existence, like the equator. It is purely and entirely an arbitrary convention ; and yet its position is of exceeding importance to mankind. From the very convenience of this position we are apt to forget its value ; for the line is the great day-origin.

It sets, not the time of day merely, but. the day itself. At the line two days meet. There, though time flows ceaselessly on, occurs that unnatural yet unavoidable jump of twenty-four hours ; and no one is there to be startled by the fact, — no one to be perplexed in trying to reconcile the two incongruities, continuous time and discon tinuous day. There is nothing but the ocean ; and that is tenantless. Had it been otherwise, — had the line crossed some continent where man dwelt, — there might have been two great towns, ten miles apart, with different days yet the same hour. "Noth ing neAv under the sun ! " Why, tAvo days Avould be born with every sunrise. And persons induced to do so, from financial or other causes, could go skipping across the line, doubling certain days of their Aveeks while they foreA'er obliterated others.

Noav, as we pass this meridian westAvard, we simply drop a day into the deep ; and but feAV of us pause to consider that we have in reality buried a cause of strife, — an immaterial something Avhich, had it not been for the uninhabited ocean, would have throvra the world into inextricable confusion. The point at issue is nothing less than the agreement upon a com mon day for the whole world. The form of the earth and her rotation give man a certain natural measure of time. As she turns upon herself, the sun light and the shade mark out for him a division he calls a day ; and for any one place the darkness severs one day from the next, but for the earth as a Avhole the day sweeps endlessly round. There is no line to determine where this unending light shall cease to be the old day and become the neAv : the symmetry of the globe renders such a thing impossible.

Man must place it for himself. Noav, so long as civilized nations — or at least all such as knew or cared about one another — lived close together, it mat tered little Avhether they all agreed upon the same origin or not : and it mattered less Avhere they placed it, provided only it was far enough away from all. But Avhen they came to care about the antipodes, the case changed. Whether they had each made for themselves their own day, or had consented to Avorship at the common shrine of a convention, the problem Avould have been equally embarrassing. Indeed, had the world reached that stage of scientific and practical development in which the knoAvledge of its surface in its entirety became necessan*, before man's migrations had carried him to what we now call Europe, no little annoyance might have resulted from his position ; for, Avith himself as centre, the beginning of his day Avould lie at the one hundred and eightieth meridian, because as far away from him on the one side as on the other.

If, then, his own meridian had lain not in Europe but in India, the other Avould have crossed the American Continent, to the great confusion of its present inhabitants. There Avould then have been no natural gap. An imaginary line only Avould make it Wednes day here and Thursday to him avIio stood a stone's - throw aAvay. Most fortunately, then, the impossible hiatus occurred where no continuity was needed. The attempt to make both ends meet — the end and the beginning — was rendered un necessary by the great Pacific Ocean. Most fortunate was it, indeed, that opposite the spot Avhere man was destined most to think there should have been placed so little to think about. There is one loss which most travellers count a gain. It is the parting with that day which we drop from out the circle of our year into the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

We fall asleep one night in the new world to aAvake on the after-morroAv's morning in the old. The day that knoAvs no to-morrow — was yesterday. And Ave are somehow glad. We A*ouchsafe the event a feeling, in our joy that we seem by so much nearer to our journey's end. We hardly give it a sober thought. Still less do we imagine that Ave shall meet its spirit in the land Avhither we are bound, — that we shall find that for once the fancies of far-Eastern superstition and the prosaic dictum of Western science are at one. Long before such a thing as a prime meridian had entered the thoughts of men, before they could dream that their early beliefs Avould later receive a certain sanction from science, the races of the Asiatic Continent had mused about the day's beginning, and put its birthplace where Ave have agreed to find it to-day.

Their myths, and the names those myths have left behind them, are a pretty, poetic forecast of our stern matter of-fact convention. Modern science needed a starting-point for the day ; ancient fancy sought the place from which every morning came forth the sun : and the spot they fixed upon is the same. Our present fiction was an old-time fact. The sun rose from out the ocean ; to the far-Oriental it seemed that he must have slej)t there. To them his abode Avas a fairy palace ; to us it is a geometrical line. Thus sadly has scientific necessity caused illusion to narrow and disappear. The continent upon which these early races found themselves did not girdle the globe. If it had they might perhaps have been endlessly pursuing and destroying one another round the circle. As it was, its general profile shaped their course to the sea.

Their birthplace had much to do with the direction which they took ; but apparently the direction in itself, as that toAvard the rising or the setting sun, had little or nothing to do with it. Such thoughts came later. They went because they were driven, probably not by foes behind them, but by the restless spirit within. While the Aryans went AvestAvard, certain of the Turanian peoples struck east ; and from that moment they separated, not by distance only, but in thought, in customs, in those ways of looking at things which we are too apt to call innate, once and forever. They had differed a little when they set out. There Avas a whole world of feelings be tween the tAvo ere they had both completed their long journey. As with the west, so in the east. Horde after horde went forth, — at first, no doubt, to seek new* pasture-lands.

Like many a wanderer since, they forgot the object that had brought them, in the charms of their new surroundings. Arrived at the sea-coast, their material advance was stopped ; for they possessed neither the means nor the knoAvledge to venture upon the boundless bosom of the ocean. The land is man's friend ; the ocean is at best but neutral. The mind must abet the Avish, be it ever so strong, before man will become a sailor to lands beyond the sea. But if they went not in body, their dreams sped aAvav to an earthly paradise beyond the water, — a happy material immortality where all was young and fair. The names they have left behind them bear witness to fond beliefs ; and so do the names of their lands to the journey that brought them thither. The Japanese were among the first, and they went the farthest.

They came, in all likelihood, through Avhat is now the Korean Peninsula. Urged by the same desire that pushed our forefathers across the Asiatic Continent into Europe, they themselves at last ventured upon the sea. We can imagine them risking their way across the strait that separates what have since become their islands from the Korean Peninsula: first to Tsushima, which, from the highlands of the hilly coast, they could see, — a streak of darker blue against the sky ; thence they made out Iki ; and once there the islands would be a wall in front of them. But beyond these islands there was nothing but the restless, everlasting blue. To their watchful, anxious gaze, as they stood peering across the deep, no land Avas visible in the waste of waters. But every morning the sun rose in fiery splendor from out the ocean.

Surely it was here that the day began. There could be nought beyond save the refrions of the blessed, whence the day was born anew each morning for the dwellers upon this earth ; and so they named their land "The Day's Beginning,"1 long, long ago in the morning of the ages. 1 Nihon, from whose characters, as pronounced by the Portuguese, comes our word Japan, is the collective name of the islands that compose the Japanese Empire. It But these beliefs were not confined, to the Japanese. Both before they sailed, and long after the Avanderers who never returned, and even the memory of their wanderings, had been utterly forgotten by those avIio remained behind, such beliefs existed. From before the time of history, the races along the Asiatic eastern watershed have turned their gaze, and imagina tions that pierced beyond their gaze, toward the rising, as Ave do toward the setting, sun.

All those longings, all those castles in the air, dreams of possibilities, — impossibilities, — Avhich come unbidden to him Avho watches the sun as it sinks to rest, these peoples saAV Avhen it rose from out the deep. And so it happens that the peninsula which had been the pathAvay of the Japanese, and was destined later to become a dAvelling place permanent beyond its felloAvs, comes to our notice first as a mythical region of ultramundane bliss. It was called " The Land of the God-men." In it greAv, not the apple of the Hesperides, but the imaginary cactus that cured all ills, — that conquered disease, that brought immortality. " The fairy palm " the Chinese called it ; and the common people in Korea see it in the mountain ginseng to-day. But a neAv horde from the north poured forth, and the gods took Avings before them.

Less adventurous than their prede cessors, they crossed not the sea ; they tarried in the land and became a part of it. Yet they forgot not their old traditions ; and as year after year and century after century slipped away, Ave may imagine that they may almost is commonly, but somewhat loosely, translated "the rising sun." "Ni" me.ant originally " the sun," and thence, by an easy transition, its signification was ex tended to mean "the day." "Hon" means "origin." The two together, therefore, mean "tlie origin of the sun or day." "Nihon," which is Sinico-Japanese, would, in pure Japanese, be expressed by "hi no moto," and not " hi no de," which is the expression for " sunrise." The character signifying " to appear, to rise, as of the sun," is quite distinct, from that which is read " hon," whieh denotes '.' an origin, a beginning, a birth, as opposed merely to an appearance."

A strictly literal rendering bears out the mythological origin of the name,— to my thinking, even more poetic than " The Land of the Sunrise." MORNING — IN THE OLD PALACE GROUNDS. ha\re looked upon themselves as the successors of the former myths. At any rate, the sun rose for them in the peaceful splendor that wraps the morning hours there even to this day, and the sunbeams fell into the valleys between the hills and nestled on the land. "Morning Calm" they called it; and it seemed not so much a name as its very essence. The droAvsy quiet of the spot lulled them to rest, and they fell asleep. They Avere in the Avorld, yet it Avas to them as if it had passed away. And so they slept on for ages. Like the palace in the fairy tale, everything remained as it had been centuries before. Change knew them not, and time stood still.

Individuals passed aAvay and were forgotten, but the race seemed immortal. No alien might approach the place ; and their neighbors to the north and west seemed quite disposed to respect their seclusion, exacting only a tribute for the privilege they enjoyed of being left alone. What they took into their sacred precincts that they kept. Albeit most of Avhat they took had been borroAved from their neighbors' customs, they clung to it as if it had been the fruit of their OAvn ideas. And so it came to pass that we have here a most remarkable phenomenon, a living fossilification — the preservation intact in this w*orld, the law of whose very existence is change — of the life, the thought, the manners, the dress, of centuries ago. In the Koreans of to-day Ave are not only looking upon what is strange, we are looking upon Avhat has once been and has elsewhere passed away.

Like the old Etruscan king, as he was seen for a moment when his tomb Avas exposed to view, they stand before us to-day just as they appeared on the day of their inhumation. Like him, too, will not the vision all crumble aAvay to dust on contact with the air of the outer Avorld 1 But Nature, as well as man, has singled out the peninsula for a charmed region of the past. When the long equinoctial summer drew* to its close, and the icy hand of winter crept over THE LAND OF THE MORNING CALM. the north of Asia and entombed the mammoths where Ave find their skeletons at the present time, a mantle fell over what is now Korea and the countries round about. It may have been that the surrounding water for a time kept the fauna warm, or they may have been so hemmed in that Nature at bay fought for her life ; but Avhatever the cause, the fauna lived on.

Whatever change there was, they acclimated themselves to it. The tiger kept his haunts in the jungle, and the great bustards continued to roam the plains. EA*en the crocodile clave to the muddy banks of the estuaries which for centuries had been his, in spite of any falling off in the temperature of his habitat. Escape may have been cut off. At all events, it Avas easier for the fauna to remain, even under what at first were adverse circumstances, than to migrate. It is not a little singular that this should have been the case It is certainly surprising that the Bengal tiger, so called, — a beast that we habitually associate with the damp, hot jungle, — should be found in the dry and cold climate of Korea and Manchuria. Yet there he is ; and his appearance is just what it is in the jungle of India, only that he is a trifle smaller.

And yet he frequents, from preference, not the warmer valleys, but the forests on the sides of the mountains. To suit his condition, his hair has lengthened and his fur is all the handsomer. His pluck in remaining has met with its due reward. He is most highly honored, much more so than he would have been in the land where he more properly belongs. His name, it is true, is a household Avord on the lips of both peoples ; but in the north it commands not only dread but admiration. He is regarded as the archetype of strength and courage. His picture is the symbol of military greatness ; and on the old battle-flags it used to be borne before the army when the Korean soldiers marched to war. The tiger did not remain alone ; his former associates stayed likewise. The leopard continued to live where his race had lived before him.

Even iioav, after centuries of persecution, he abounds there in such numbers that the skins form the most common of the insignia of official rank. Those from neighboring Manchuria — because to Manchuria, unlike Korea, there is access from the outer world — are to be met with, outranking the nativ*e product in lands whose specialty such things are supposed to be. With the flora the case was different. Those species that covered the land in its early balmy days the peninsula knows no more. Their sun Avent south ; they could not follow, and they could not live Avithout him. They died. Perhaps no better criterion of the rank of an organism can be chosen than its strength to endure adversity, — physically speaking, its power of adaptability. To flourish when all is fair around it, Avhen it meets with nothing but smiles, is of the lowest ; but to stand Avhen everything compasses its destruc tion, " hie labor, hoc opus est."

We praise it as it sIioavs itself in the characters of men ; and Ave do Avell. But it is deeper than this. It is one of the fundamental laws of Nature. All alike, the loAver with the higher, will thrive Avhen given Avhat they want ; but to mould what is given into Avhat is wanted, this is an attribute only of the latter. " Quand on ne peut avoir ce qu'on aime, il saut aimer ce qu'on a," might truly be called the password to race immortality. Just in proportion as the range of the capabilities of any organism becomes extended, as the compass of its powers increases, so will it resist. Increase takes place first in the complexity of bodily structure, and then, as we ascend the scale, in that of mind ; and complexity in mind makes possible simplicity in matter : and this, it seems to me, renders it possible for us dimly to conceiA*e Iioav an infinite mind may, for its own existence, be independent of matter.

THE LAND OF THE MORNING CALM. The plants, then, could not adapt themselves. All remains of vegetable life, such as groAV within the tropics, have long ago disappeared from Korea. It is now, for all its past, like any of its .sister latitudes for vegetation. And man has aided in the change : he has done his best to leave no aboriginal vegetation at all ; and in the southern half he has very fairl}* succeeded. He has completely domesticated the land. Indeed, it is not a little surprising to observe how completely what we must suppose to have been originally a shepherd people has transformed its business in life. Agricultural, sedentary, fixed, — such have become pre-eminently the characteristics of the race. What was once a tribe of nomads has entirely and peculiarly forgotten its wandering instincts.

They journeyed cen turies ago to the land of myths, and became a part of it, — they settled in the heritage of the gods, and were content ; and a halo as of immortality has rested upon them to this day. THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE PENINSULA. 11

Chapter II. The Geography Of The Peninsula

TO most minds there lurks a certain charm in the mysterious. The very fact that secrecy wraps a subject as with a mantle renders us all the more eager to tear aAvay the veil. The possession of this feeling is at once an exciting cause and a sanction to knowledge. We realize its power as regards persons, things, events ; less commonly is it a motive force to the study of a whole nation, and yet it is in this connection that I Avould call upon it now. I ask you to go Avith me to a land whose life for ages has been a mystery, - -a land Avhich from time unknown has kept aloof, apart, so that the very possibility of such seclusion is itself a mystery, and Avhich only yesterday opened her gates. For cycles on cycles she has been in the world, but not of it. Her people have been born, haA*e lived, have died, oblivious to all that was passing around them.

They might have been denizens of another planet for aught they knew of the history of this. And the years glided into centuries, and the centuries grew to be numbered by tens, and still the veil remained as tightly drawn as at the beginning. It Avas but last year that Korea stepped as a debutante into the society of the world. There is a certain natural fitness in beginning the description of a country by positing its geography. It is kindred to the Avay Ave commonly make one another's acquaintance. We learn to recognize the form before Ave become familiar with the spirit ; and though the land is not the people, as the body is not the person, yet both land and body have much to do Avith the character of those avIio tenant them. If A\*e Avill cast our eyes upon a large map of the Avorld, or still better upon some large globe, we shall discover a peninsula just to the west of the Japanese islands.

It is the peninsula of Korea. We shall knoAv it, by inference, from the scarcity of names upon it. Of a land of which next to nothing was known, next to nothing could be represented ; and we shall hardly be glad to learn that almost all of what Ave shall read Avill be in correct. Map compilers are artful. They put in much more information than they possess ; and then, when even that does not suffice to cover the paper, they reduce the scale of the drawing. By this artifice the areas unavoidably left blank are much diminished in extent. Unfortunately, then, all that we shall be able to make out from our atlas will be the exist ence of the peninsula, and the name Korea. We shall not discover that as much more country to the north of it is Korea, too ; for the frontier line on the map Avill not be such as Avould satisfy either China, on the one hand, or Korea on the other, or Russia, that all-devourer of other people's property in this part of the world, on both.