498 
PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION E. 
in the preparation of a red sticky candy. It is also boiled and eaten 
in place of rice. Panicled millet grain is used as a boiled dish by 
the poor, especially in the north. These crops do not alternate with 
others, and require but little fertiliser. 
Common millet with ft yellow grain is sown in drills on dry land, 
with beans, Ac., between. One day’s ploughing yields some twenty 
bags, bringing a land price of $6000. Common millet crops alternate 
with wheat. The wheat crop, requiring much manure, makes a’good 
preparation for a crop of millet the following year. The poorer classes 
use much common millet. On a journey from Chasung, in the far 
north of P’yungyang, to Hamheung, in 1891, 1 found boiled millet the 
ordinary dish. Their way of preparing it makes it most uninteresting. 
To me it seemed like eating dry sawdust, and I was glad to alternate it 
occasionally with oats and potatoes. A poor kind of fermented drink 
is made from common millet. 
Wheat is not popular because of its small yield and limited use, 
one day’s ploughing yielding only three or four bags. It must be 
well manured. This manure is prepared by catching all the urine 
about the place — a most offensive trough being found before each 
guest-room door in the country. A heap of dried grass, earth, and 
rubbish is raked up before the door. When it has accumulated to 
some six or eight feet in height the contents of the trough is poured 
over it ; it is then set fire to, and the charred mass and ashes are used 
as fertiliser. This is the common practice in the central part and far 
north. In the south, cesspools are formed among the fields, and from 
these liquid manure is carried. Manure is all hand-mixed, and is 
dropped along the drills in spring ; the labourer by one foot making a 
hole to receive it, and by the other covering up the manure. Wheat 
is also sown in raised drills with beans, &c., between ; it is one of the 
earlier crops, and is often followed by buckwheat the same season. 
Wheat is the great staple for the preparation of spirit, both distilled 
ancl fermented, sweetmeats, cakes, &c., but is the least useful of all 
their grains. 
Buckwheat — grown much in mountain valleys — is used in the 
preparation of vermicelli ( ' Jcooksoo ), the most popular dish in Corea. 
Beans are grown in large quantities, planted between the drills of 
some other grain, as millet, wheat, &c. Used as feed for horses and 
cattle, they are always boiled, and fed in a trough of water. The 
quantity of water is so large in proportion to the solid material that 
the animals seem almost to drown before getting at the beans in the 
bottom of the trough. This bean broth serves as meat and drink, as 
ponies are never allowed to touch cold water. 
Barley is also common, especially in the south. One variety is 
sown in the autumn in hollow drills, well manured. It is used as a 
safeguard against famine, and as feed for beasts. The people use 
it only when rice, millet, and other more acceptable grains have 
given out. 
Oats grow in the far north, where other grains would prove a 
failure. On the way from Hooch’ang to Hamheung I found boiled 
oats a common dish. The people always apologised for offering such 
poor fare as oats. 
Glutinous millet also grows, and lentils, from which a clear sort of 
jelly paste is made ( [mook ] ). 
