OVER THE AN-KIL YUNG PASS
Finding the Tai-döng totally impracticable, and being limited as to
time by the approach of the closing of the river below Phyöng-yang by
ice, I regretfully turned southwards, and journeyed Seoul-wards by
another route, of much interest, which touches here and there the right
bank of the Tai-döng.
As I sat amidst the dirt, squalor, rubbish, and odd and endism of
the inn yard before starting, surrounded by an apathetic, dirty,
vacant-looking, open-mouthed crowd steeped in poverty, I felt Korea to
be hopeless, helpless, pitiable, piteous, a mere shuttlecock of certain
great powers, and that there is no hope for her population of twelve
or fourteen millions, unless it is taken in hand by Russia, under
whose rule, giving security for the gains of industry as well as light
taxation, I had seen Koreans in hundreds transformed into energetic,
thriving, peasant farmers in Eastern Siberia.
The road, which was said, and truly, to be a very bad one, crosses
a small plain, and passing under a roofed gateway between two hills
which are scarred by remains of fortifications running east and west,
enters upon really fine scenery, which becomes magnificent in about 30
_li_, at first a fertile mountain-girdled basin, whose rim is spotted
with large villages, and then a narrowing valley with stony soil, and
a sparse population, walled in by savage mountains of emphatic forms,
swinging apart at times, and revealing loftier peaks and ranges then
glittering with new-fallen snow.
[Illustration: RUSSIAN OFFICERS, HUN-CHUN.]
In crossing the plain at a point where the road was good, I was
remarking to Mr. Yi what a pleasant and prosperous journey we had had,
and hoping our good fortune might continue, when there was a sudden
clash and flurry, I was nearly kicked off my pony, and in a moment we
were in the midst of disaster. One baggage pony was on his back on his
load, pawing the air in the middle of a ploughed field, his _mapu_
helpless for the time, lamed by a kick above the knee, sobbing, blood
and tears running down his face; the other baggage animal, having
divested himself of Im, was kicking off the rest of his load; and
Im, who had been thrown from the top of the pack, was sitting on the
roadside, evidently in intense pain--all the work of a moment. Mr. Yi
called to me that the soldier had broken his ankle, and it was a great
relief when he rose and walked towards me. Everything breakable was
broken except my photographic camera, which I did not look at for two
days for fear of what I might find!
Leaving the men to get the loads and ponies together, we walked on
to a hamlet so destitute as not to be able to provide either wood or
wadding for a splint! I picked up a thick faggot, however, which had
been dropped from a load, and it was thinned into being usable with
a hatchet, the only tool the village possessed, and after padding it
with a pair of stockings and making a six-yard bandage out of a cotton
garment, I put up Im’s right arm, which was broken just above the
wrist, in splints, and made a sling out of one of the two towels which
the rats had left to me. I should have been glad to know Korean enough
to rate the gossiping _mapu_, three men to two horses, who allowed the
accident to happen.
The animals always fight if they are left to themselves, and loads and
riders are nowhere. One day Mr. Yi had a bit of a finger taken off in a
fight, and if a strange brute had not kicked my stirrup iron (which was
bent by the blow) instead of myself, I should have had a broken ankle.
When we halted at midday the villagers tried hard to induce Im to have
his arm “needled” to “let out the bad blood,” a most risky surgical
proceeding, which often destroys the usefulness of a limb for life, and
he was anxious for it, but yielded to persuasion.
Being delayed by this accident, it was late when we started to cross
the pass of An-kil Yung, regarded as “the most dangerous in Korea,”
owing to its liability to sudden fogs and violent storms, 3,346 feet in
altitude, and said to be 30 _li_ long.
The infamous path traverses a wild rocky glen with an impetuous torrent
at its bottom, and only a few wretched hamlets, in which the hovels
are indistinguishable from the millet and brushwood stacks, along its
length of several miles. Poverty, limiting the people to the barest
necessaries of life, is the lot of the peasant in that region, but I
believe that his dirty and squalid habits give an impression of want
which does not actually exist. I doubt much whether any Koreans are
unable to provide themselves with two daily meals of millet, with
clothes sufficient for decency in summer and for warmth in winter,
and with fuel (grass, leaves, twigs, and weeds) enough to keep their
miserable rooms at a temperature of 70° and more by means of the hot
floor.
To the west the valley is absolutely closed in by a wall of peaks.
The bridle-path, a well-engineered road, when it ascends the very
steep ridge of the watershed in many zigzags, rests for 100 feet, and
descends the western side by seventy-five turns. Except in Tibet,
I never saw so apparently insurmountable an obstacle, but it does
not present any real difficulty. The ascent took seventy minutes.
Rain fell very heavily, but the superb view to the northeast was
scarcely obscured. At the top, which is only 100 feet wide, there is a
celebrated shrine to the dæmon of the past. To him all travellers put
up petitions for deliverance from the many malignant spirits who are
waiting to injure them, and for a safe descent. The shrine contains
many strips of paper inscribed with the names of those who have made
special payments for special prayers, and a few wreaths and posies of
faded paper flowers. The woman who lives in the one hovel on the pass
makes a good living by receiving money from travellers, who offer rice
cakes and desire prayers. The worship is nearly all done by proxy, and
the rice cakes do duty any number of times.
Besides the shrine and a one-roomed hovel, there are some open sheds
made of millet stalks to give shelter during storms. The An-kil Yung
pass is blocked by snow for three months of the year, but at other
times is much used in spite of its great height. Excellent potatoes are
grown on the mountain slopes at an altitude exceeding 3,000 feet, and
round Tok Chhön they are largely cultivated and enter into the diet of
the people, never having had the disease.
Darkness came on prematurely with the heavy rain, and we asked the
shrine-keeper to give us shelter for the night, but she said that to
take in six men and a foreign woman was impossible, as she had only
one room. But it was equally impossible for us to descend the pass in
the darkness with tired ponies, and after half an hour’s altercation
the matter was arranged, Im, who retained his wits, securing for me a
degree of privacy by hanging some heavy mats from a beam, giving me, I
am sure, the lion’s share of the apartment. Really the accommodation
was not much worse than usual, but though the mercury fell to the
freezing point, the hot floor kept the inside temperature up to 83°,
and the dread of tigers on the part of my hostess forbade my having
even a chink of the door open!
The rain cleared off in time for the last sunset gleam on the distant
mountains, which, when darkness fell on the pass, burned fiery red
against a strip of pale green sky, taking on afterwards one by one the
ashy look of death as the light died off from their snows. All about
An-kil Yung the mountains are wooded to their summits with deciduous
trees, the ubiquitous _Pinus sinensis_ being rare; but to the northward
in the direction of Paik-tu San the character of the scenery changes,
and peaks and precipices of naked rock, and lofty mountain monoliths,
with snow-crowned ranges beyond, form by far the grandest view that I
saw in this land of hill and valley.
Then Im had to be attended to, and though I was very anxious about him,
I could not be blind to the picturesqueness of the scene in the hovel,
Mr. Yi sitting in my chair holding the candle, the soldier, with his
face puckered with pain, squatting on the floor with his swollen arm
lying on a writing board on my lap, and no room to move. I failed there
as elsewhere to get a better piece of wood for the splint, which was
too short, and I could only get wadding for padding it by taking some
out of Im’s sleeve, and all the time and afterwards I was very anxious
for fear that I had put the bandage on too tightly or too loosely,
and that my want of experience would give the poor fellow a useless
right arm. He was in severe pain all that night, but he was very
plucky about it, made no fuss, and never allowed me to suffer in the
slightest degree from his accident. Indeed, he was even more attentive
than before. He said to Mr. Yi, “The foreign woman looked so sorry, and
touched my arm as if I had been one of her own people, I shall do my
best”--and so he did. I had indulged in a long perspective of pheasant
curries, and I must confess that when the prospect faded I felt a
little dismal. To a traveller who carries no “foreign food,” it makes a
great difference to get a nice, hot, stimulating dish (even though it
is served in the pot it is cooked in) after a ten hours’ cold ride. To
my surprise, I was never without curry for dinner, and though before
the accident I had only cold rice for tiffin, after it I was never
without something hot.
The descent of An-kil Yung is very grand. The road leads into a wide
valley with a fine stream, one side of which looks as if the mountains
had dumped down all their available stones upon it, while the other is
rich alluvial soil. Gold washing is carried on to a great extent along
this stream, which is a tributary of the Tai-döng, and some of the
workings show more care and method than usual, being pits neatly lined
with stone in their upper parts. Eighty cents per day is the average
earning of a gold-seeker there. This valley terminates in pretty,
broken country, with fine mountain views, and picturesque cliffs along
the river, on which the dark blue gloom of pines was lighted by the
fading scarlet of the maple, and crimson streaks of the _Ampelopsis
Veitchii_ brightened the russet into which the countless trailers which
draped the rocks had passed. The increased fertility of the soil was
denoted by the number of villages and hamlets on the road, and foot
passengers in twos and threes gave something of life and movement.
But it was remarkable that so soon after the harvest, and when the
roads were in their best condition, there were no goods in transit
except such local productions as paper and tobacco--no strings of
porters or ponies carrying goods into the interior from Phyöng-yang, no
evidence of trade but that given by the pedlars going the round of the
market-places.
Along that road and elsewhere near the villages there are tall poles
branching at the top into a V, which are erected in the belief that
they will guard the inhabitants from cholera and other pestilences.
On that day’s journey, at a crossroad, a small log with several holes
like those of a mouse-trap, one of them plugged doubly with bungs of
wood, was lying on the path, and the _mapu_ were careful to step over
it and lead their ponies over it, though it might easily have been
avoided. Into the bunged hole the _mu-tang_ or sorceress by her arts
had inveigled a dæmon which was causing sickness in a family, and had
corked him up! It is proper for passers-by to step over the log. At
nightfall it is buried. That afternoon’s ride was through extremely
attractive country--small valley basins of rich stoneless soil, with
brown hamlets nestling round them in calm, pine-sheltered folds of
hills, which though not high are shapely, and were etherealized into
purple beauty by the sinking sun, which turned the lake-like expanse of
the Tai-döng at Mon-chin Tai, the beautifully situated halting-place
for the night, into a sheet of gold.
With a splendid climate, an abundant, but not superabundant, rainfall,
a fertile soil, a measure of freedom from civil war and robber bands,
the Koreans ought to be a happy and fairly prosperous people. If
“squeezing,” _yamen_ runners and their exactions, and certain malign
practices of officials can be put down with a strong hand, and the
land tax is fairly levied and collected, and law becomes an agent for
protection rather than an instrument of injustice, I see no reason
why the Korean peasant should not be as happy and industrious as
the Japanese peasant. But these are great “ifs”! _Security for the
gains of industry_, from whatever quarter it comes, will, I believe,
transform the limp, apathetic native. Such ameliorations as have been
made are owed to Japan, but she had not a free hand, and she was too
inexperienced in the rôle which she undertook (and I believe honestly)
to play, to produce a harmonious working scheme of reform. Besides,
the men through whom any such scheme must be carried out are nearly
universally corrupt both by tradition and habit. Reform was jerky and
piecemeal, and Japan irritated the people by meddlesomeness in small
matters and suggested interferences with national habits, giving the
impression, which I found prevailing everywhere, that her object is to
denationalize the Koreans for purposes of her own.
Travellers are much impressed with the laziness of the Koreans, but
after seeing their energy and industry in Russian Manchuria, their
thrift, and the abundant and comfortable furnishings of their houses, I
greatly doubt whether it is to be regarded as a matter of temperament.
Every man in Korea knows that poverty is his best security, and that
anything he possesses beyond that which provides himself and his
family with food and clothing is certain to be taken from him by
voracious and corrupt officials. It is only when the exactions of
officials become absolutely intolerable and encroach upon his means of
providing the necessaries of life that he resorts to the only method of
redress in his power, which has a sort of counterpart in China. This
consists in driving out, and occasionally in killing, the obnoxious
and intolerable magistrate, or, as in a case which lately gained much
notoriety, roasting his favorite secretary on a wood pile. The popular
outburst, though under unusual provocation it may culminate in deeds of
regrettable violence, is usually founded on right, and is an effective
protest.
Among the modes of squeezing are forced labor, doubling or trebling the
amount of a legitimate tax, exacting bribes in cases of litigation,
forced loans, etc. If a man is reported to have saved a little money,
an official asks for the loan of it. If it is granted, the lender
frequently never sees principal or interest; if it is refused, he
is arrested, thrown into prison on some charge invented for his
destruction, and beaten until either he or his relations for him
produce the sum demanded. To such an extent are these demands carried,
that in Northern Korea, Where the winters are fairly severe, the
peasants, when the harvest has left them with a few thousand _cash_,
put them in a hole in the ground, and pour water into it, the frozen
mass which results then being earthed over, when it is fairly safe both
from officials and thieves.