EXPLORING UNKNOWN CORNERS OF THE 

 " HERMIT KINGDOM" 



By Roy C. Andrews 



Author of "Shore-Whaling: A World Industry' 



With Photographs by the Author 



A LTHOUGH Korea has a civiliza- 



/\ tion extending nearly 4,000 years 

 X J^, into the past, many of the na- 

 tives in the north have never seen a white 

 man. They are living- among the hills 

 today much as did their ancestors cen- 

 turies ago, worshiping mythical gods in 

 the rocks and trees on every mountain- 

 top, keeping their women in semi-slavery, 

 and dying in ignorance that beyond the 

 narrow confines of their own peninsula 

 lies a world replete with undreamed of 

 wonders. 



Wrapped in the mantle of Oriental se- 

 clusion, for centuries Korea successfully 

 guarded the secrets of her mountains and 

 her people ; but at last the clamor of for- 

 eigners at her doors could no longer be 

 stilled, and she yielded reluctantly inch 

 by inch, although realizing that the foun- 

 dations of her weak government were 

 crumbling beneath her. 



It was in 1882 that the first treaty with 

 Korea was signed by the United States, 

 and foreigners took up their residence 

 with official sanction at Chemulpo, the 

 seaport of the capital, Seoul. Even with 

 this foothold in the new country the un- 

 welcome visitors pushed their way but 

 slowly into other parts of the kingdom, 

 and as late as 1897 only a relatively 

 small portion had been visited by white 

 men. 



SECRET OF THE "DRAGON PRINCE'S POOL," 

 DISCOVERED BY MISSIONARIES 



After the Russian-Japanese war of 

 1904, however, when the country was 

 freely opened to foreigners and its rail- 

 way had been completed, the exploration 

 of the northern part progressed, by leaps 

 and bounds, until the only extensive un- 

 known area lay along the north central 

 boundary between the Tumen and Yalu 

 rivers. 



This was said to be a region of treach- 

 erous swamps, densely forested plateaus, 

 and gloomy canons — a vast wilderness, 

 treasuring in its depths the ghostly peak 

 of the Long White Mountain, wonder- 

 fully beautiful in its robes of glistening 

 pumice. The secret of its summit, where 

 the "Dragon Prince's Pool" lies far down 

 in the ancient crater, had been learned as 

 early as 1709 by two Jesuit missionaries, 

 coming from the north through Man- 

 churia, but the approaches to its base 

 from the south and west in Korea had 

 never been traversed by a white man. 



Its zoology, except by inference from 

 that of remote surrounding regions, was 

 less known than its geography, and this 

 led the American Museum of Natural 

 History to send an expedition to make 

 a study of its fauna. 



JAPAN AIDS THE AMERICAN EXPEDITION 



Before any non-resident foreigner can 

 go into the interior, permission must be 

 obtained from the Bureau of Foreign 

 Affairs at Seoul, for the Japanese insist 

 on knowing the "reason why" for the 

 visits of all foreigners to the remoter 

 parts of their newly acquired possession. 

 The Museum's expedition was given the 

 enthusiastic support of the government, 

 however, and was furnished with one of 

 their official interpreters, a Japanese who 

 spoke Korean, Chinese, and a little Eng- 

 lish. A Korean cook who knew some 

 English was also engaged, and developed 

 into a valuable assistant after he had be- 

 come convinced that lie wai not the 

 leader of the expedition. 



At first he was the source of endless 

 trouble; for. like all Koreans, he saw in 

 his position as "man of all work" an op- 

 portunity for extensive graft. He began 

 by affecting an extraordinary aversion to 

 Japanese food and begging money for 



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