Korea (Hamilton)/Chapter 17

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The world of politics in Seoul had become of a sudden so profoundly dull, that, ignoring the advice of the weather-wise inhabitants of the capital, I packed my kit, and hiring ponies, interpreters and servants, moved from the chief walled city of the Empire into the wild regions of the interior. My journey lay towards Tong-ko-kai, the German mines, several days' journey from Seoul. Life, in the capital, is not destitute of that monotony which characterises the Land of the Morning Radiance. But beyond the precincts of the Imperial Palaces, out of sight and hearing of the countless little coteries of Europeans, the contrast between the moving, soft-robed, gentle masses of people who congregate within her gates, and the mountain reaches and valleys of the open country is refreshing. For the moment the pleasure of such an experience ranks high among the joys which life holds.

Save in the first few li from the capital, we abandoned the beaten tracks, travelling along quiet byways and mountain paths, turning aside at fancy to climb a peak or to take a swim in the cool, deep waters of some secluded pool at night, and morning, and at our noonday halt. In the pleasant ​
BEYOND THE CAPITAL

shades of these cool mountains and sunlit valleys the people live in unrebuked simplicity. They offered the loan of charcoal stoves or retailed eggs, chickens and rice to my servants. At the moment of my bath, youths and youngsters gambolled with me in the stream. It is said that the Koreans are far from clean, a statement they belied upon many occasions by the freedom and enjoyment with which they indulged in these dips. Foreigners had not penetrated along the route which my friend and I were following to the German mines, and even the ubiquitous evangelist had not penetrated to these peasant homes. The mountains and rivers had no names; the settlements were small; inns did not exist. Everywhere was contentment, peace, and infinite repose. Nature stood revealed to us in primæval grandeur, and it was impossible not to enjoy the calm of the valleys, the rugged beauty of the mountain crests, the picturesque wildness of the scenery. ​

​As the days passed the general character of the country remained unaltered. The manifold and complex tints in the bush, the differing aspects of each succeeding height, the alternating complexion of the valleys, dissipated the monotony, engendered by the never changing features of the picture—the trees and mountains, hillside hamlets and mountain torrents, precipitous passes and windy plateaux. Moving thus slowly through the mountain passes, a wonderful panorama silently disclosed itself. Hills were piled one upon another, gradually merging into chains of mountains, the crests of which, two and three thousand feet in height, stood out clearly defined against an azure sky, their rock-bound faces covered with birch, beech, oak and pine. The valleys below these mountain chains were long and narrow, cool and cultivated. A hillside torrent dashed through them, tumbling noisily over massive boulders, gradually fretting a new course for itself in the lava strata. Countless insects buzzed in the still air; frogs croaked in the marsh meadows; the impudent magpie and the plebeian crow choked and chattered indignantly among the branches of the trees. Cock-pheasants started from the thick cover of the low-lying hills, the dogs pointed the nests of the sitting hens, and does called to their calves among the young bushes. A calm and happy nature revealed itself spontaneously in these fragrant places, undisturbed, luxurious, and unrestrained. The road was rough. Here and there, in keeping with the wild and rugged beauty of the scene, it became the narrow track of the Australasian "backs," congested with bushes, broken by holes and stones, almost impassable until the coolies made a way.

Across the clattering crystal of the gushing torrent a rustic bridge was flung, the merest makeshift, three feet in ​width, with a flooring of earth and bush, which bent and swayed upon slender poles, beneath the slightest burden. Some streams were unbridged, and the diminutive ponies splashed through them, gladly cooling their sweating flanks as their drivers waded or carried one another to the distant bank. Wild ferns, butterflies, and flowers revelled in these unkempt gardens. The red dog-lily and purple iris glowed against the foliage of the shrubs and bushes. Gigantic butterflies eclipsed the glories of the rainbow; their gorgeous tints blending into harmony with the more subdued plumage of the cranes and storks that floated lazily across the inundated spaces of the paddy-fields. Other birds, with dove-grey, pink, or yellow breasts and black pinions, fished in the streams with raucous cries. The most amazing tints, recalling some of Turner's later pictures, gladdened the eye in these delightful valleys. In the depths of the valleys the mountain torrents flowed more idly, and the stream meandered in a thousand directions. Upon either bank, its volume was diverted to the needs of some adjacent rice-field. In these paddy-patches green and tender shoots were just sprouting above a few inches of clear water. Here and there, fields of wheat bordered these water-soaked stretches; oats, corn, barley, tobacco, cotton, beans and millet were scattered about the sides and plains of the mountain valleys in a fashion which proclaimed the fertility of the soil.

Everything throve, however, and the industry of the workers in the fields was manifested at every turn of the road. Their ingenuity in making the most of available land recalled the valleys which run down to the fiords of Norway, where, as in Korea, patches of cultivated ground are visible at the snow level. Here, in these beautiful valleys, perhaps ​a thousand or fifteen hundred feet up the mountain side, acres of golden crops will be growing in the warm and happy seclusion of some sheltered hollow.

At the turn of the winding track, bordered by the paddy-fields or acres of golden barley, oats and tobacco, lies a village. It is but a cluster of some dozen straw-thatched hovels, dirty and unprepossessing, but infinitely quaint and picturesque. The walls of the houses are crumbling and stayed up with beams and massive timbers; the latticed windows are papered, the doorways low. A hole in the wall serves the purposes of a chimney; a dog is sleeping in the porch; a pig squeaks, secured with a cord through the ears to a peg in the wall. Cocks and hens are anywhere and everywhere, the family latrine—an open trough, foul and nauseous, used without disgust by all members of the family save the older women-folk, stands upon the verandah. Somewhere, near the outer limits of the small settlement, an erection of poles and straw matting distinguishes the village cesspool, the contents of which are spread over the fields in the proper season.

A glimpse into a house, as one rides through the village shows a man combing his long hair, a woman beating her husband's clothes or ironing with a bowl heated with charcoal; many naked children, the progeny of child-wives, scarce out of their teens. For the moment the village seems devoid of life. As the clatter of the cavalcade resounds, a child, feeding itself from a basin of rice, emerges from a window; a man tumbles to his feet yawning noisily. Women, with infants hanging at their breasts or bearing children strapped to their backs in dirty clothes, the usual naked band of well-developed breast and unwashed back showing, crowd into the streets. All eye the newcomers ​with indifferent curiosity, until we wish them a plenteous rain—"May the rain come soon, good people." Then they bend their heads respectfully at the salutation, and instantly

become bright and smiling. Winsome kiddies, muddy and naked, offer us flowers, and bowls of water from the streams upon which their elders have settled.

As the road threaded through the mountains, long valleys, widely and richly cultivated, the yellow lustre of the golden crops blazing in the sunlight, lay below. Granite peaks towered upwards, their rugged faces scored by time and tempest, their ragged outlines screened with firs and birch. The still air was laden with the aromatic scent of the pine-woods; the sky was clear and blue. In the distance, snow-white clouds hung in diaphanous festoons about a curve in the mountains. The rough contour broke ​where the heights were bleakest and most barren. A twist in the broad valley which our road traversed limited the prospect, but the direction lay beneath the shadows of those distant peaks, and the perspective already compensated for the precipitous climb.

Indeed, from a few li beyond Chyök-syöng, a magistracy of the fourth class, where the houses are roofed with thick slabs of slate supported by heavy beams, where the streets are clean, and where road and river alike make a détour, the views by the wayside became increasingly impressive. For mile upon mile we saw no wayfarers. The villages were widely distant; fertile valleys gave place to green-black gorges, without cultivation, peaceful, grandly beautiful, and uninhabitable. The perfect stillness and the wonderful magnificence of the panorama held one spell-bound. There was no change in the character of the scenery until, riding slowly forward, the road dropped from the comfortable shade of a mountain temple into the blazing sunshine of the plain. Pushing forward, the rice and cornfields receded, giving place to the ranges, whose lofty peaks, dressed with their mantling clouds, had been already dimly discerned. Throughout the journey of the next two days the road rose and fell, winding in a steady gradient across the mountain sides.

The march to Tong-ko-kai was laborious, and one day, when within easy distance of the concession in a tiny hamlet, the colour of the slate and granite boulders, nestling among waving bushes, almost unconscious of the outer world and hardly alive to its own existence, an ideal spot in which to pitch the evening camp was found. It was early in the afternoon, but the road ahead looked rough and stony. Our horses were fatigued, the ford had been troublesome and we were wet, cold and hungry. Within the bush ​the shadows were deepening. No one knew the site of the next village nor the precise direction in which we were moving, so we halted. That night we snuggled down with our faces to the cliffs. Our horses were tethered in a patch of corn, and the kit, the servants, interpreters and grooms lay in one confused and hungry tangle round us. Within sound of the deep roar of the river we slept peacefully. Indeed, I am not certain that this one hour when, invigorated by a swim in some mountain pool, refreshed by a slight repast, we rocked in our camp beds, smoking and chatting, looking into the cool black depths of the canopy above us, was not the best that the day held. There was something intensely restful in those long, silent watches. The mighty stillness of the surrounding heights of itself gave a repose, to which the night winds, the murmurs of the running water and our own physical fatigue, insensibly added. It was pleasant to hear the ponies eating; to watch the stars come out, the moon rise; to listen to the bull-frog in the water weeds and the echoes of the song of a peasant, rising and falling among the peaks of the high mountains, until, at length, all sounds had passed away and the great world around us, above us, and below, lay at peace.