146 . Voi<. IX 



A COIvIvECTiNG TRIP IN KOREA 



By MALCOLM P. ANDERSON 



ISHOUIyD like to give The Condor a specific list of the birds seen and obtained 

 by me in Korea, but owing to my own ignorance, and for other reasons, this is 



not possible, so I content myself with the following account of one of my 

 journeys, with some indications of what the bird fauna is like. 



On the 29th of October, 1906, I left Seoul for the region sixty or seventy miles 

 northeast of there. I had heard that there was some forest out that way, and longed 

 to find it. In company I had my Japanese assistant, Orii, and a Korean "boss." 

 Four big and dirty coolies carried my outfit of food, blankets, traps, and ammu- 

 nition for a month's collecting. The coolies had promised to travel twenty miles a 

 day, and had been paid for a day in advance for that distance, but I saw soon after 

 we started that they would not go so far, so at a village ten miles on our waj^ I 

 hired a fifth fellow. But this did no good; they went no faster. At nightfall we 

 were but fifteen miles from Seoul. We had passed that day thru the small culti- 

 vated valleys, and barren, dry, and much eroded hills which surround the capitol. 

 The only birds we had seen were a crow, some kites, and the magpie (Pica nistica 

 I believe), which is very common in Korea. 



Orii and I spent that night in a little room at a village inn. As in most such 

 places the walls were of mud much blackened with smoke, and tapestried with 

 sooty cobwebs; the floor was of mud and stones covered with oiled paper. The sole 

 entrance was thru a little door which served as window too, being a framework 

 covered with paper. 



The following d^y I sent the coolies about their own business, and engaged two 

 horses to carry my things. When he came to pack, the driver objected that there 

 was too much for two horses; I must have three. This was not true, but as he 

 refused to load all, I engaged a by-standing coolie to pack something, and that day 

 we proceeded much faster. 



About twenty miles from Seoul I noticed a decided improvement in the 

 country. The pines and bushes on the hills became more plentiful, water more 

 abundant, and the whole aspect less desolate. With the exception of one large gray 

 shrike {Lanius excubitor?) I saw no new birds this day. 



The morning of our third day out there was a slight rain, and I was powerless 

 to get the horse driver to start, so we were compelled to wait for the rain to cease, 

 which it did about noon. Then the driver wanted me to pay him for the previous 

 day; but this I refused to do because I felt he intended to abscond as soon as he got 

 his money. I paid his bill at the inn, but still he refused to go, but I held out, and 

 at last we started at a good pace, and in the evening reached a village called 

 Penchan, fifty miles northeast of Seoul. Nearby here I observed some high hills 

 lightly wooded with pines in the canyons, and with some brush on the ridges. I 

 determined to stop here a few days, and explore these hills. So we obtained the 

 best room in the best inn, and unloaded our packs there. The room proved to be 

 nine feet square, with a beam along one side, by way of shelf, which was just the 

 right height to hit one's head against when one rose from a stooping position. We 

 didn't stay long enough to accustom ourselves to that beam. This room was lighted 

 by, two doors. I found that by shoving my table close to one of them I could see 

 well enough to skin, during the lightest hours, but the more satisfactory way was 

 to skin by lantern-light in the evening. We lived on canned goods largely, but also 



