By the wayside—A journey inland to Tong-ko-kai—Inland beauties
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.
[Illustration: BEYOND THE CAPITAL]
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 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.
[Illustration: WOODLAND GLADES]
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.
[Illustration: COUNTRY CARTS]
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.
[Illustration: A PITCHED BATTLE]