JOURNEYS THROUGH KOREA. 79 



the southwest to Kok- song, in which direction a stream of clear 

 water drains down a wide and shallow sandy bed. Korean 

 mountains are, generally speaking, not very high ; but they are 

 so sharpty delineated and characterized by sucli regularity of 

 trend that travellers receive a strong impression of their great 

 altitude. We had a good example here. To the west, we saw 

 the ridge Pl-hong-chhi ^^ which we had crossed the day before 

 (PI. Xin. fig. 2). To the south, the barrier-like (PI. XIII. fig. 1) 

 South Pam-chhi (Chestnut-tree pass, 200 m) with its regular 

 ridge and trend separated us from the flat of Ku-ry'ôi, already 

 mentioned '\ It runs N. 70^E. to San-chhyöng, obliquely cutting 

 down the Chiei-san massive. It is the most pronounced of the 

 topograpliic elements of the equatorial Han-san system. To the 

 north is the hilly lan^I of No-rg'ông, and on the east side is the 

 INNEE Chiei-san eidge which I had presently to cross. 



From the eumnai to the Yö-uön-chJii^^ (435 m), the road fol- 

 lows a stream of clear water with a bed of arkose gravel up to 

 the pass where tlic rock is a slightly compressed biotite-granite 

 (PI. XIV. fig. 1). The slope is thinly covered witli pine forest 

 on a clean, half-decomposed granitic ground (see fig. 1). The 

 scenery is fine from the Korean point of view. One finds on 

 the natural rock- surface by the road side two inscriptions which 

 General Liu^\ the Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese army, had 

 engraved in ostentatious commemoration of his passing here, in 

 1593 and 1594, on his way to drive away Taiko's army from 

 the peninsula in which, of course, he did not succeed. The 

 custom of eno-raving larcj-e Chinese characters on natural ex- 

 posures is still in vogue in Korea, and one finds many such 



1) See page 78. 2) See page 44. 3) ^ m U 'U M U 4) ^ I^ flif 



