3o8 



NATURE 



[January 28, 1892 



disadvantages inseparable from the mountainous character of 

 the country. In Japan and China we know that persevering 

 care and energy have overcome similar disadvantages, but it is 

 not so in Korea. The terrace cultivation, the irrigation worlcs, 

 and above all the patient, almost fastidious labour, which make 

 the hills of Japan and South China yield their share of the 

 earth's good fruits, are practically unknown. Where water is 

 abundant and easily manageable, the lower reaches of the valleys 

 are taken up with rice, the higher portions with millet, beans, 

 buckwheat, &c. A particularly favourable slope, all the better 

 if it faces the south, is usually as much as the sides of the valley 

 are called upon to contribute to cultivation. There is consider- 

 able waste about the paths and paddy-dykes, weeds are rank 

 and numerous, and the prim neatness so conspicuous in Japanese 

 farming is entirely wanting. Much of the newly broken ground 

 is naturally stony, and little effort is exercised to make it less so. 

 However, considering the small amount of labour expended on 

 agricultural operations, the crops are good, and speak eloquently 

 for the fertility of the soil." 



Mr. Campbell reached the River Yalu in October, and although 

 he made every endeavour to reach his goal, the snow was so 

 deep, the passes so overhung with accumulations of snow, and his 

 guides so terrified, that he was compelled to turn back when 

 within a mile or two of the summit. Nevertheless, he succeeded 

 in making observations of considerable interest. 



" Peik-tu San, or Lao-pai Shan (Old White Mountain) as it is 

 at present called by the Chinese of Manchuria, is the most re- 

 markable mountain, naturally and historically, in this part of 

 Asia. The perennial whiteness of its crest, now known to be 

 caused by pumice when not by snow, made the peoples that 

 beheld it from the plains of Manchuria give it names whose 

 meanings have survived in the Chinese Ch'atig-pai Shan, or 

 Ever White Mountain. This designation, obviously assigned 

 to the While Mountain alone, has been extended to the whole 

 range without apparent reason, for no other peak of it, so far as 

 is known, can pretend to perpetual whiteness, whether of pumice 

 or snow. Some lOO miles south-east of Peik-tu San there is a 

 Ch'ang-peik San (Ever W^hite Mountain) which must approach, 

 if it does not exceed, the White Mountain in height, but the 

 Koreans do not ciedit it with a snowy covering for more than 

 nine months of the year, and a European traveller who has seen 

 it informs me that it is wooded to the summit, quite unlike Peik- 

 tu San, which is bare of forest for the last looo feet of its height. 

 The great point of interest in the mountain, apart from its 

 whiteness, is the lake — 12 miles in circuit according to Mr. 

 James and his party, the only Europeans who have seen it — 

 which lies in the broad top of the mountain at a height of 7500 

 feet above sea-level, and is supposed to be the source of the 

 three rivers, Yalu, Tumen, and Sungari. The Tei Tei-ki, Great 

 Lake, as the Koreans call it, is the nucleus of a mass of 

 legend and fable. It is a sacred spot, the abode of beings 

 supernrtural, and not to be profaned by mortal eye with 

 impunity. Curiously enough, neither Chinese nor Koreans 

 have the faintest notion of the real character of Peik-tu San. 

 The Chinese say that the lake is an 'eye of the sea,' and the 

 Koreans tell you that the rock of which the mountain is composed 

 floats in water, for lumps of pumice were common on the Yalu 

 at Hyei-san." Mr. Campbell's crude geological explanations, 

 that this chosan (ancestral mountain) of Korea was a burnt-out 

 volcano, whose crater had been filled with wattr by springs, 

 were listened to with polite wonder, and treated with much less 

 credulity than they deserved. He pointed to the black dust, to 

 the clinkers, and to the rocks lining the banks of the Yalu for 

 miles, many of which looked as if they had been freshly ejected 

 from some subterranean furnace, bnt to no purpose. If 

 the occurrences he spoke of had taken place, they must have 

 been handed down by tradition ; and it was useless to cite lapse 

 of time — Koreans are ignorant of geological periods— to people 

 whose history extends as far back as 4000 years ago. According 

 to Mr. Campbell's observation, most of the forest between 

 Po-ch'on and Peik-tu San grows on volcanic matter, which was 

 without doubt ejected from Peik-tu San during successive erup- 

 tions. The general inferiority of the timber hereabouts to that 

 which he saw elsewhere in Korea led him to examine the soil 

 wherever an uprooted tree or a freshly-dug deer-pit furnished the 

 opportunity. " Beyond a thin coating of leaf-mould on the sur- 

 face, there was seldom anything else but pumice, broken to the 

 size of a very coarse sand. According to the hunters, this was 

 the subsoil everywhere in the forest, and to my knowledge 

 it extends for forty miles at least to the south from Peik-tu San. 



NO. 1 161, VOL. 45] 



Nearing the mountain we get the clearest evidence of the cha- 

 racter and recency, geologically speaking, of the eruptions 

 which spread this vast quantity of volcanic material over such a 

 wide area. Ten miles due south of the White Mountain, the 

 Yalu, now 8 or 10 yards broad and very shallow, flows between 

 banks like a railway-cutting, sheer, clean, and absolutely devoid 

 of vegetation, for denudation was too rapid to permit the slightest 

 growth." The sections thus exposed were often over 100 feet in 

 depth, and at one of the deepest portions Mr. Campbell counted 

 thirteen layers of black volcanic dust, all varying in thickness, 

 and each separated from the layer above by a thin layer of 

 light- coloured mould. So fine was this dust that the least 

 breath of wind caught it and scattered it freely over the 

 adjoining snow, to which it gave a grimy, sooty appearance. 



"The forests of South Manchuria, though uninhabited now, 

 were, we learn from Chinese records, the home of many races 

 in ages past. The comparatively recent kingdom of Ko-ku rye, 

 which arose in the first century B.C., is said to have occupied 

 the Ch'ang-pai Shan and the head-waters of the Yalu river. 

 Anyone who has travelled through the forests might be inclined 

 to doubt such records, for, excepting hunters' lodges, one never 

 notices a vestige of human occupation. But it must be remem- 

 bered, on the other hand, that the word kuk (Chinese kuo), 

 country or kingdom, was applied in the early history of Korea 

 and Manchuria to very limited communities, often to mere 

 villages. The word "tribe" better expresses what the so-called 

 kingdoms actually were ; and when we bear in mind their low 

 civilization and the impermanent character of their dwellings, it 

 is not surprising that my hasty journey failed to throw any light 

 on the ancient inhabitants of these forests." Since his return, 

 however, Mr. Campbell was informed by Mr. Fulford that 

 Chinese hunters told him of the discovery by them of human 

 implements — of what kind Mr. Campbell cannot say — when 

 digging deer-pits near the White Mountain. 



Mr. James, in a paper read before the Royal Geographical 

 Society in June 1887, described very fully the guild of hunters 

 which practicalfy owns and rules the forests to the north and 

 west of Peik-tu San. The Koreans have no such guild, 

 probably because they have not so much to fear from bandits, 

 but each hunter has a recognized right of ownership over a 

 rudely defined district in the neighbourhood of his hut. Over 

 this he hunts and traps deer in summer, and sable at the begin- 

 ing of winter, altogether spending about five months of the year 

 in the forest ; the remaining seven are passed at his home on or 

 near the Yalu, either tilling his ground or living in idleness on 

 the proceeds of hunting seasons. Besides sable and deer, tiger 

 leopard, bear, pig, and ermine are found here ; bear, probably 

 the common brown species {L'rsiis arctos), are said by the 

 hunters to be very numerous in summer. In mid- Korea Mr. 

 Campbell has seen a small black bear with a white patch on his 

 chest ( Ursits tihetanns), but the Yalu trappers did not seem to 

 know it. Hazel-grouse were the only game-birds he noticed. 

 Throughout the forests insect pests abound in the summer 

 months. Mosquitoes, gnats, and gad-flies make the lives of the 

 settlers perfectly burdensome for two or three months of the 

 year, and ponies and bulls quickly succumb to their attacks. 

 The houses are kept constantly filled with birch-smoke to drive 

 them off ; cattle are protected by fires of greenwood in the open ; 

 and men working the clearings carry coils of rope made from 

 dried Arteviisia, which burns slowly and emits a pungent odour, 

 for the same purpose. 



THE GEOLOGY OE THE HIMALAYAS. 



'X'HE tv\enty-third volume of the Memoirs of the Geological 

 -^ Survey of India, consisting of some 250 pages, is wholly 

 taken up by an account ol the geology of the Central Hima- 

 layas, by the Superintendent of the Survey, Mr. C. L. Gries- 

 bach, CLE. The carefully written text is illustrated by some 

 of the most exquisite and instructive photographs of synclinals, 

 folded beds, faults, glaciers, &c., which have ever been pro- 

 duced, to say nothing of the numerous maps and sections. 



We have thought it best to give Mr. Gnesbach's conclusions 

 on the important subject with which he deals in his own 

 words : — 



The Himalayan region forms part of the vast structure of the 

 Central Asian elevation ; it is so closely connected with the 

 latter, both structurally and geographically, that it is very 



