23 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



struck the Japan Sea. A journey of sixty miles along the coast 

 brought him to Wen-san, one of the ports opened to trade by the 

 treaties with foreign powers. Hence he followed the coast-line 

 northward for six days, passing through a number of populous 

 towns, to Puk-ch'eng. Trade, which was not active on the Seoul- 

 Wen-san route, was particularly stirring along the east coast. It 

 is mainly in Manchester cottons. Fairs were common between 

 Wen-san and Puk-ch'eng as they are in all the populous dis- 

 tricts of Korea. "The road was always animated with a con- 

 course of merry, brightly dressed people, wending their way to 

 the market town; women carrying jars and baskets of melons, 

 pears, chillies, etc., on their heads, and babies on their backs; 

 bulls and carts laden with brushwood for fuel; produce of all 

 kinds, including grain and dried fish, borne by ponies and men ; 

 sturdy, half-nude coolies, perspiring under lofty, wooden frame- 

 works, to which assortments of earthenware pots and turned 

 wooden dishes are attached; and, more numerous than all, the 

 pleasure-seeker, or Jcu-Jcyeng-kun, in holiday dress, strutting 

 along in company with a batch of friends, gesticulating, laugh- 

 ing, and cracking jokes productive of the most hilarious mirth. 

 Such throngs greeted the foreigner with amused surprise, some- 

 times a trifle rudely, but always good-naturedly. The women, in 

 most cases, behaved as properly conducted Korean women ought 

 to do when their faces run the risk of being scanned by a stranger, 

 and turned their backs upon him ; yet frequently all scruples 

 vanished before an overpowering curiosity to take in the particu- 

 lars of so odd a costume, or to discuss the singularity of the 

 equipage. The main street of the town or village is the market- 

 place. It often widens into a sort of place or square, where 

 straw booths are hastily erected for the occasion ; but, ordinarily, 

 each man exposes his wares on some boards, or on a cloth spread 

 on the ground in the best spot available. The articles for sale are 

 of the simplest." 



From Puk-ch'eng Mr. Campbell took the direct, across-country 

 route through Kap-san, to Peik-tu-san, in preference to the more 

 interesting circuitous route, because of the lateness of the season. 

 Following the Peik-ch'eng River to its source, he then, next day, 

 after leaving the city (September 24th), reached the crest of the 

 range which here fringes the highlands of North Korea. The 

 top of the pass, called Hu-ch'i Ryeng, is 4,300 feet above the sea ; 

 thence to the Yalu, at Hyei-san, a distance of a hundred miles, 

 there was a gradual descent, with one remarkable irregularity, to 

 an elevation of 2,800 feet. " The aspect of the country had com- 

 pletely changed. We had left some valleys producing rice and 

 cotton, and had entered a plateau-like region, where these crops 

 were impossible, their places being taken by oats, millet, and 



