mourning, but the usual style of head-dress is to shave the extreme
summit of the head, while the rest of the hair grows long and is
braided up in a sort of topknot with a little bird-cage hat above it.
This hat is then tied under the chin as an American woman would tie
hers.
Girls are but little seen on the streets, custom requiring them to
stay indoors before marriage, and the married women, when on the
street are likely to wear a sort of green wrap thrown over their heads
and shoulders that leaves only their eyes and contiguous facial
territory exposed. The tourist is at first {63} inclined to think that
there are many young girls on the streets, but this is because the
boys dress as we have grown used to seeing girls dress in America.
Take the young boy who waits on my table: fair of feature in his neat
white dress, and with a long glossy hair-plait hanging down his back,
you would think him some fair Korean maiden. When he gets married a
little later, probably at seventeen or eighteen, he will shave his
head (not necessarily as a sign of mourning!) and wear his hair
thereafter in the manner described in the preceding paragraph. An
English missionary-doctor's pretty daughter here yesterday (and how
pretty an English or American girl does look in this far land!) told
me that a Korean girl of twenty or twenty-one is regarded as a rather
desperate old maid, and the go-betweens, who arrange the marriages
here as they do in Japan, are likely to charge a rather steep sum for
getting a husband for one so far advanced in spinsterhood! The chances
are that the groom doesn't see his bride until the ceremony, and she
doesn't even see him then, for according to the curious custom here
the bride's eyes are sealed up until late afternoon of her wedding
day. More than this, custom requires that the bride must keep
absolutely unbroken silence all the day long, and for a varying length
of time thereafter. Mrs. Bishop in her book on Korea asserts that "it
may be a week or several months before the husband knows the sound of
his wife's voice,"--and the nature of the dear creatures in America
will of course insure the ready acceptance of her statement!
The go-betweens are often not very scrupulous, and for good fees
sometimes manage to palm off damsels of unsatisfactory features on
unsuspecting swains, or match undesirable young fellows with girls
vastly superior to them. A rather amusing instance was reported to me
by the young lady from whom I have just quoted. One of the officials
or noblemen in Seoul had a daughter whom the go-between was preparing
to marry off into a family of rank in another city. A few days before
the wedding-day-set-to-be, some one came to {64} the father of the
bride and said: "Did you know that your prospective son-in-law has a
hare-lip?" Now a hare-lip in Korea is not merely such an undesirable
addition to one's countenance as to make a Mrs. Wiggs happy because of
being without it, but under the old dispensation no one with a
harelip, or other like facial blemish, could be presented at court and
thereby introduced into the Four Hundred of this capital city.
Therefore the father waxed thoughtful from his topknot to the end of
his long-stem pipe. "I tell you what I'll do," he finally said to his
wife. "We'll go ahead with the ceremony, but instead of my daughter
I'll substitute my orphan niece." And he did, and the young fellow
didn't know any better for a week.
Fortunately, however, my story doesn't end here. I am extremely glad
to add the usual "lived-happily-ever-after" peroration, for that was
really what happened in this case. The father of my young lady
informant, who is a doctor, sewed up the young fellow's lip, he was
presented at court, and the real daughter who so narrowly escaped
marrying may be an old maid, for all I know.
In such a high, dry climate as this one would expect to find little
tuberculosis, but I am told that there is really a great deal of it,
due to the carelessness of the families where there are victims, and
to the generally unsanitary conditions. A daughter of one of the
Southern missionaries here, having contracted the malady, has just
gone to Arizona in search of cure. Everywhere on the streets I
encounter faces marked by smallpox, and formerly to have had the
disease was the rule rather than the exception. In fact, instead of
alluding to a man's inexperience by saying "He hasn't cut his eye
teeth," as we do, a Korean would say: "He hasn't had smallpox." Since
vaccination became the rule, however, there are very few cases.
Infant mortality here, as in America, is one of the greatest factors
in the high death-rate, but conditions are improving. {65} And so long
as authorities declare that in America half the infant death-rate is
due to ignorance or neglect, we haven't much right to point a scornful
finger at Korea, anyhow.
I have already alluded to the fact that the old monarchial government
of Korea ended its inglorious career but a few short months ago. While
the records of the nation run back more than three thousand
years--probably to a period when Job was so superbly reproaching his
comforters in the Land of Uz--the late dynasty runs back only 500
years. We Americans, I may say in passing, are accustomed to think of
men of five hundred years ago, or even of John Smith and Pocahontas,
as very ancient, but a pedigree of only five hundred years wouldn't
entitle a family to enter good society over here. But though only five
hundred years in power, this recent dynasty succeeded in doing about
as much devilment and as little good as many dynasties much older in
years. One of the missionaries explained to me yesterday that it was
only when the King got very mad that he would order heads cut off
without reason--but then the Koreans are very lazy and his inactivity
at other periods may have been due to sloth.
The truth is, that most of these Oriental monarchies have been corrupt
beyond the belief of the average American. When I was a boy I used to
hear the old men in country churches thank God for the blessings of
orderly government and for the privilege of worshipping as they chose,
"with no one to molest us or make us afraid." As a rule, we take such
things as matters of course, but when one comes over here into Asia
and into countries where the people have been cursed by corrupt
governments, where innocent lives have been taken upon the mere whim
of the government, where property has been confiscated with no better
reason, and where men have had to die for their faiths:--when he, in
short, comes into lands where the rights of neither life, property nor
conscience have been respected, he is likely to prize his American
privileges somewhat more highly.
{66}
The old Korean dynasty was not only corrupt, but unspeakably stupid.
Like the people, the King relied on sorcerers or fortune-tellers to
find a lucky day or a lucky time of the moon to do whatever he wished,
and in case of sickness consulted the mutang, or conjurer, instead of
a doctor. Thus when the prince had smallpox some years ago, the mutang
declared that the Smallpox Spirit or devil (who must always be
referred to with great respect as "His Excellency") would not leave
unless allowed to ride horseback clear to the Korean boundary, three
hundred miles away; and a gayly caparisoned horse was accordingly led
the entire distance for His Excellency, the Smallpox Spirit, to ride
away on!
The government was also unfeignedly corrupt. Offices were given, just
as lives were taken merely at the whim of the Throne. Taxes were
farmed out, the grafting collectors taking from the people probably
five or six times as much as finally reached the public treasury. More
than this, the nobility robbed the people at will, and there was no
authority from whom they could get redress. Woe unto the man who
became energetic and industrious under the old dispensation! First,
the tax-gatherers would relieve him of the bulk of his swollen
fortune, and what was left the noble or "Yang-ban," as a noble was
called, would take the trouble to borrow but never take the trouble to
repay. For the Yang-ban was a "gentleman," he was. It was beneath his
dignity to work--even to guide the reins of the horse he rode--but it
was not beneath his dignity to sponge on his friends (I think the verb
"to sponge" is too expressive to remain slang) or to borrow without
repaying. Moreover, in case of extremity, it is said that Mother
Yang-ban and Sister Ann might take in washing, as is recorded in the
classic lays of our own land, but Father never defiled himself by
doing anything so dishonorable as an honest day's work.
But alas and alack! for the degeneracy of our times. The Yang-bans in
Korea have been deprived of their ancient {67} privileges, and I fear
that even their fellows in America are by no means treated with the
ancient deference and respect due to persons of such exalted merit and
blue-blood.
What with the arbitrary and oppressive system of tax-robbery and the
extortions of the Yang-bans it is not surprising that the Koreans here
became disinclined to labor, while those who went to Manchuria, where
there has been "proper security for the gains of industry" are said to
be quite a different folk--energetic because there has been
encouragement to be energetic. The old Korean system of taxation being
arbitrary, the only way to escape a raid by the tax-gatherer was to
appear not to have anything worth raiding, and with the coinage
confined usually to the copper "cash" (each "cash" worth a small
fraction of a cent), it was difficult for a man to have much money
without everybody knowing it. If a man had much he needed a warehouse
to store it in. Mrs. Bishop in her book, already referred to, speaks
of a time when it took 3200 "cash" to equal a dollar in our money,
making each coin worth 1-32 of a cent, and it took six men or one pony
to carry $50 worth of coin! Another instance is mentioned in the
Japanese official Year Book on Korea. The Japanese army bought $5000
worth of timber in the interior, where the people were not used to any
other currency, with the result that "the army had to charter a small
steamer and fill her completely with this copper cash to finance the
transaction!" I bought a few long, necklace-like strings of this old
Korean money at ten cents a string, and even then probably paid too
much.
When I bought my ticket for Korea it was nominally an independent
monarchy under a Japanese "protectorate," but the day before I sailed
from San Francisco, Japanese aggression took another step and the
country was formally annexed as a part of the Japanese Empire. There
is little doubt, I suppose, that the Japanese will give the Koreans
better government than the old monarchy gave them, but one {68} cannot
excuse all the methods by which Japan fastened her rule on the island.
Yesterday morning I went out to the Old North Palace, a deserted and
melancholy memorial of vanished power, stood on the throne where
Korean kings once held audience, and saw the royal dwelling in which
the Japanese and their aids killed the Queen in 1895, and also saw the
place where they burned her body. The Japanese minister at that time
was recalled and placed on trial for the offence, and, though he
escaped conviction, the evidence of his guilt was undoubted. It has
been estimated that in about eighteen months in 1907-'08, "12,916
Koreans, called 'insurgents' by the Japanese and patriots by their
fellow countrymen, were killed by the Mikado's soldiers and gendarmes,
only 160 of whom lost their lives." This looks more like butchery than
war. Moreover, the Japanese themselves have to admit that there were
inexcusable delays in paying for land seized from Koreans, and in view
of all the circumstances it is questionable whether the Korean hatred
or dislike of Japan will become very much less cordial than it is
to-day.
Perhaps in no country in the world has missionary work been more
successful than in Korea (there are probably 125,000 Protestants now,
while there were only 777 thirteen years ago), and I have been
interested to learn that there is absolutely no truth in the Japanese
newspaper reports that immense numbers of native Christians are
leaving the church since annexation. On the contrary, reports from all
over the country are good, and Seoul itself is just now in the midst
of a most thoroughgoing and successful Christian revival, with 1800
conversions reported during the first ten days. At a Methodist mission
school I visited this morning I found that a hundred of the native
pupils had been canvassing the town a part of three successive
afternoons with the result that they had brought in the names of 697
Koreans expressing a desire to become Christians.
Here in Korea there is no waste of energy or money through {69}
denominational divisions. Each denomination has its own sphere of
activity, preventing duplication of effort, and my general observation
has convinced me that the criticisms of foreign mission work sometimes
heard in America are based on a radical misconception of conditions.
Even the non-Christians, in the great majority of cases, speak in high
praise of the splendid work of the missionaries. A typical expression
is that found in the latest issue of the Shanghai _National Review_,
now before me, which may be expected to speak impartially. Referring
to an address by Doctor Morrison, the Peking correspondent of the
London _Times_, it says:
"Doctor Morrison eulogized the work of the missionaries and we
cannot conceive that anybody who really knows of their work at first
hand, not as it is to be found in extreme cases, but as ordinarily
carried on, should do otherwise than eulogize it."
Seoul, Korea.
{70}
VIII
MANCHURIA--FAIR AND FERTILE
"Uneasily sleeps Mukden to-night"--I remember yet how one of the
dispatches began which brought so vividly to my mind the meaning of
the great death-grapple here between the Japanese and Russian hosts in
1905.
[Footnote: "Uneasily sleeps Mukden to-night. In the main street
lamps burn dimly. Along dark roads in heavy dust are marching
columns. The cool night is full of the low rustle of movement. Near
the station, in over-filled hospitals, are heard low groans. The
wounded arrive in a never-ceasing stream of carts, and another
stream of ambulances moves northward, for the place must be cleared
for to-day's victims. The eternal pines whisper above the Tombs of
Chinese Emperors. In the fields watch fires are burning stores and
evacuated villages----" And the correspondent goes on to tell of the
wearied forces gathering for further fighting with the coming of
dawn--men footsore and weak for want of food and water and rest. For
forty-eight hours the Japanese had not eaten.]
The story in a nutshell is this:
"After the capitulation of Port Arthur, Oyama pressed toward Mukden,
where Kuropatkin had established his headquarters, and there from
February 24 to March 12 occurred probably the most desperate battle
in modern history, if not in all history. About eight hundred
thousand men were engaged. Again Oyama won, and Kuropatkin retreated
in fairly good order about a hundred miles north of Mukden."
So runs the historian's brief record of the titanic struggle five
years ago in the ancient Manchurian city to which I have come. What
Gettysburg was in our Civil War, that Mukden was in the first great
contest between the white race and the Mongolian. Here covetous Death
for once was satisfied, his gruesome garnering seen at each wintry
nightfall in the {71} windrows of bloody and mangled bodies strewn along
miles of snowy trenches.
I have heard all sorts of war traditions in Mukden: that at one time
the Japanese thought themselves beaten in the battle and had ordered a
retreat, when, a Russian force giving way, they turned quickly to
press the advantage and snatched victory from what they had thought
was ruin. There are many stories, too, of the inefficiency of the
Russian officers, stories made all the more probable in the light of
the Russian Commander Kuropatkin's memoirs to the same general effect.
"Why, the English would put one of their admirals against the wall and
shoot him like a common seaman for such gross neglect of duty as went
entirely unpunished among Russian generals," was one man's comment as
he talked with me. "The Rooshians were good fighters--fought 'and to
'and with the butt of their muskets--and if they 'ad 'ad good
commanders the Japs would never have won," said an Englishman who had
seen service in India. A railway man also told me of the debauchery
and profligacy of the Russian officers, disreputable women travelling
regularly with them to and fro, drunkenness being also common. About
the same charges were reported to me by a Japanese officer. In fact,
it is said that the Japanese contrived to get a very considerable
quantity of champagne to the Russian headquarters one day, and the
next day made a slaughter-pen of the Russian camp while the Cossack
commanders were still hopelessly befuddled from too much drinking!
The truth is that the Japanese, from camp-followers to
commander-in-chief, were prepared for war and the Russians were not.
From the day that Russia, aided by France and Germany, forced Japan to
cede back to China some of the fruits of her victory over the Chinese,
from that hour Japan nursed and fed fat her rankling grudge and bided
her time as deliberately as a tiger waiting to spring. While I was in
Japan an Englishman told me that immediately after Russia forced Japan
{72} to give up her spoils of victory he was amazed to see the
tremendous interest in the military drills in all the Japanese
schools. When he asked what it meant, there was one frank answer: "We
are getting ready to lick Russia."
It should also be observed that when the war came on the Japanese were
not only in a state of preparedness so far as battleships and army
drill and munitions of war were concerned, but they were also prepared
in the vital matter of proper medical attendance.
"When your American soldiers went with Shafter into Cuba the army was
utterly without proper medical corps and equipment, and the death-rate
was disgracefully high. But the first Japanese who fell in crossing
the Yalu were taken at once to the best of Japanese surgeons and cared
for in the most approved of modern military hospitals." So said a
frank Scotchman to me yesterday, and in the light of the official
statistics I could say nothing in palliation of the unpleasant
allusion to America. When the war with Russia ended, Baron Takaki,
Surgeon-General of the Japanese Army, boasted that whereas in the
Spanish-America War "fourteen men died from preventable diseases to
one man killed on the field of battle," the Japanese had lost only one
man from disease to every four from bullets. Now the Japanese, as
usual, had not worked out any of the principles of medical science,
sanitation, and hygiene which enabled them to make this remarkable
record, but they showed their characteristic facility in taking the
white man's inventions and getting as much or more--more in this
case--out of them than the white man himself.
The Japanese record, showing in such amazing fashion what a wisely
directed health organization may accomplish, is worth remembering not
only in connection with plans for military efficiency, but also in
connection with plans for general public health activities at home.
Every State should spend five times as much for this public health
work as at present.
In 1910 the forgetful Manchurian earth bears but few traces {73} of
the fierce contest that only five or six years ago scarred its bosom,
and the serried shocks of newly harvested corn, _kaoliang_ (sorghum)
and millet--in some infrequent instances fertilized by the dead men's
bones--are seen on fields where contending armies struggled. Let it be
so for a little while; let the Manchurian peasant sow and garner in
peace while he may; for still the war cloud hangs heavy above China's
Three Eastern Provinces, and in the next struggle the peasant's blood
may redden his own fields. For that the fighting has not ended is to
me perfectly clear. By reason of the Japanese railroad monopoly
through the very heart of Southern Manchuria, and her leased territory
on the coast, Japan has obtained power bordering on control, and
everything goes to show that she has fully made up her mind to
complete and retain that control.
Moreover, when one has seen the great Manchurian empire, it is easy to
understand how it has now roused the covetousness of Japan just as the
temptation a few years ago proved too strong for Russia. Immense
farming areas are only thinly settled; some of the richest of the
world's mineral resources have only been touched.
A day or two ago I went out to see Mr. Edward C. Parker, in charge of
the agricultural experiment farm here (he is a Minnesota man, I
believe), and found him enthusiastic over his corn crop just
harvested. "I have been so surprised by the growth of corn this year,"
he declared, "that I could hardly believe my own eyes. I have never
seen finer seed ears anywhere." Among American states, only Iowa, he
declares, is probably more fertile than Manchuria; with stock-raising
to prevent land-deterioration, all the vast southern section could
beat Illinois growing crops, and the same thing could be said of the
northern country but for its colder climate. About Harbin, where the
South Manchuria Railway joins the Trans-Siberian Line, one may see
cuts thirty feet deep and the soil rich to the bottom. Most of
Manchuria is level--strikingly like our Western Corn Belt and Wheat
Belt--and the {74} soil is of wind-drift origin "like a great
snow-blanket," very easily tilled. The plowing is done with a
steel-tipped wooden beam such as I have already written of seeing in
Korea, and only the favoring physical texture of the soil explains the
fat harvests of food, feed, and fuel achieved under such methods.
It has been a positive joy to me in traveling through the country here
in late October to see the great shocks of kaoliang, millet and corn
(even with labor at 20 cents a day out here, the people don't pull
fodder!), quaint-looking farmhouses almost surrounded by well-stuffed
barns, and corn cribs packed until the overflowing yellow ears spill
out the ampler cracks. The kaoliang is a sort of sorghum, the grain
being used for food, while the stalks, which contain but little sugar,
are used for fuel. Consequently the barnyards packed to the limit and
running over with
"The garnered largess of the fruitful year"
not only mean feed for all the variegated animals that are used in
Manchurian agriculture, but fuel for the long Manchurian winters as
well. I even find the peasants digging up the roots and stubble to be
dried and burned in the houses.
One sees but a small proportion of good horses here, and practically
no four-wheeled farm wagons. Unlike Japan, however, Manchuria does
have its farm vehicles: great heavy two-wheeled carts drawn by from
two to eight horses, donkeys, and asses. Sometimes there is a big
horse or two, then one or two donkeys half the size of the horses, and
a couple of little asses or burros half the size of the donkeys--and
maybe a bull thrown in for good measure. It looks as if the Whole
Blamed Family of work-stock had been hitched to pull the cart. The
Whole Blamed Family is often needed, too, for the roads in China are
ample proof that we needn't expect ours in America or anywhere else to
get any better by letting them alone three thousand years. The Chinese
have tried it, and it doesn't work. The October roads are so bad in
many places that if {75} the carts had four wheels instead of two not
even the combined aggregation in the team could pull them out of the
mud. A little later, however, the roads freeze over solidly and stay
so for five or six months--and then the Manchurian farmers go on long,
slow pilgrimages carrying their products to the larger
markets--sometimes two or three hundred miles from home.