502 
PROCEEDINGS OE SECTION E. 
Where the stables are far apart, or where there are no horses on 
hand, the common people, one and all, are pressed into service. I 
have seen them beaten soundly for raising objections to shouldering a 
bundle. At night, too, when torches are required, they must turn out. 
The natives have learned from experience to have torch straw ready ; 
and while they never fail to grumble aud speak of it as though it were 
a matter unheard of — this turaing out at night — they soon fall in and 
light the official to his destination. 
In the south all the common grains are found. Hemp also is 
grown widely, and is used in the manufacture of cloth for mourners’ 
dresses, &c. The straw is bound into sheaves, placed in a covered pit, 
and steam-cooked from beneath. It is then washed in the nearest 
stream, stripped of its fibre, boiled again, washed, and twisted into 
threads. Other plants furnish fibre for grass cloth, but are less 
common than hemp. 
Cotton also grows. One day’s ploughing is said to yield 150 geim, 
or catties. It is planted on strong ground, and fertilised from old 
walls, fireplaces, &c. How that so much is imported in the way of 
piece goods, the growing of cotton is on the decrease. 
Tobacco, too, is found everywhere. Coreans have a saying that 
one pipe-bowl of tobacco-seed is sufficient for a day’s ploughing. It 
must be transplanted, highly manured from old walls — the best 
fertiliser, they say. The terminal bud is nipped off, so as to give the 
leaves more opportunity to grow. The leaves are stripped off at the 
proper season, and wound by the stems into long strings of straw rope. 
These are dried gradually and pressed. 
44 True” Sesamum is another useful plant. The seeds ground up 
aud salted serve as a kind of butter. The oil pressed from it is used 
in all kinds of cooking, while the soot from burning oil makes ink. 
"Water Sesamum is planted along the borders of fields. The oil 
from this is used in the preparation of waterproofs. 
The oil from the castor-bean, also common, serves for light in 
place of candles, for medicine, and as a lubricator. 
There are, besides, fields of gourds, melons, cucumbers, chillies, 
egg-plants, &c. 
My next long trip was begun in "February, 1S91. With a foreign 
companion and two Coreans — one a gentleman who spoke Chinese, and 
the other a cook — we started on foot for Euichoo. After leaving 
Songto less than a mile the road divides — one going to Hachoo, the 
other to P’yungyang. We took the P’yungyang branch, and in five 
days were in the boat-shaped city. They say it was originally laid out 
thus, for which reason no one is allowed to dig for water inside of the 
walls, as that would be cutting through the bottom and sinking the 
ship. There is some life in P’yungyang. People are noisy, and are 
inclined to he unpleasant in their treatment of a stranger, hut, con- 
sidering the fact that we must look ridiculous to them, they behaved 
very well. There are no large manufactures ; what little there is 
seems to he done in small one-roomed shops. 
We passed through some miniug districts along the way, prin- 
cipally gold. It is the rudest kind of placer-mining. We stopped to 
exploit several, and saw their methods of w T ork. A heap of earth 
shovelled out, a pool of water, and a pan is all that is required. The 
miner tips his pan back and forth, Avashing round and round, dropping 
