COEEA. 
499 
This stay in the country was my first view of oriental farming 
life. The small percentage of the population that worked was the 
surprise to me. I seldom failed to go for a walk in the afternoon of 
each day, and all the young fellows of the village seemed perfectly free 
to go along. A few toil-worn coolies did all the work of the district. 
Mr. An (a man of fifty-five years), his son (a man of thirty-four), and 
other able-bodied members of the family did nothing, absolutely nothing, 
all day. He had two servants, who lived in small huts before his door, 
and these, with a boy or two, worked in the fields. For the inner 
quarters there was also a woman slave, for whom he had paid some- 
thing like thirty dollars. Slaves range in price according to their 
ancestry. One who has had a good line of slave forefathers is less 
likely to run away, and so will command a higher price. Slavery 
exists everywhere ; but the possibility of the slaves running away and 
hiding in the mountains makes the system less rigorous than it would 
otherwise be. 
As for pastime, the young men of the village seemed to have two 
varieties : — One in making a good quality of straw mat, at which they 
would work a week and then sell for about 50 cents ; and the other 
was patooJc , a kind of draughts. They would play hour after hour 
without money in these cases, though gambling is exceedingly common 
throughout Corea. 
There was plenty of game. I could see deer feeding daily a 
quarter of a mile back from my room, while pheasants swarmed every- 
where. They made several efforts to get a shot at the deer, one 
villager owning an old rusty gun that was worked with along rope fuse. 
The way they managed it was to give this gun to some wretched coolie 
boy or other, telling him to bring down that deer, while the gentlemen 
ranged themselves under a tree or in some cool place to look on. 
The boy knew nothing whatever of guus or deer, and consequently we 
never had fresh veuison. 
A few miles from where I lived, in a district called Charvung, is 
the largest iron works in Corea, and yet very small according to our 
notions of things, and very rude. I cannot give any idea of the yearly 
output, as the natives seeui to know so little of it themselves. They 
use a huge bellows to assist in the meltiug. The pig iron is then taken 
and worked up by blacksmiths. 
There is considerable fishing along the coasts not only of 
Whangha but everywhere else in Corea. The favourite method of taking 
them is by a hanging-net. Pales thirty feet long and more stand on 
end, three or four feet projecting above the water. Stones with ropes 
fastened round the pole are slipped down to the lower end, a sufficient 
number of them serving to keep the pole in place even in the roughest 
weather. They are put up in the form of a square, aud are held 
together and to the shore by strong cables of cli eulk (a creeper, the 
I'ueraria Thunbergiana), Heed nets are hung about these poles, and 
are visited twice a day — in early morning and in evening. These sal or 
hanging-nets are usually put up iu the twelfth moon in readiness for 
herring, which they ruthlessly take at the spawning season. Some are 
then pulled up; others, again, hang all summer, making small catches of 
cod, salmon, thornback, flounder, and the favourite fish of Japan, the 
tai or Seranus marginalise The sea is very poorly worked, I am sure 
and so the J apanese are making a good thing of Corean fishing. 
