FOOD OF THE NATIVES. 
143 
huge earthen water jar, and sundry wooden bowls ! 
The superintendent of the cauldron/^ as they term 
the cook in China, cannot, I think, be required to 
exercise much culinary talent in devising the list 
of dishes for the table. In this poor household, I 
ventured to predict they were summed up in one 
simple word — Porridge ! 
The food of the Koreans generally is of no great 
variety, and their dishes are very simple in their 
composition. The more wealthy and substantial 
among them have condiments with their boiled rice, 
and with their chopsticks help themselves to tit-bits 
of savoury pork and boiled fowl; but the poorer 
classes arc obliged to content themselves with less 
generous hire, barley -meal and the coarse flour 
prepared by pounding millet being the jnancipal 
means of sustaining life. Kice will grow only in 
the southern portion of the peninsula. 
At one period of their history the Koreans 
occupied a considerable portion of Eastern Tartary, 
from which, however, they were driven out, and 
obliged to take refuge in the peninsula which now 
