A short sail from Japan brings us to the land of big hats and long gowns, the land of the Korean, the curious people who have gained the title of  "The Hermit Nation" .  We knew nothing about them until a short time ago, yet they existed as a nation two thousand years before America was discovered, and their history records their doings as far back as twelve hundred years before Christ.  This kingdom is now largely controlled by Japan.

The Koreans have always looked upon their country as the most beautiful of the world, and have tried to keep other nations from learning about it, for fear that they might come and seize it.  For this reason the Koreans have until lately driven travelers away from their shores, and when sailors were shipwrecked there, they were not permitted to leave, lest they might carry the news of Korea to their homes.

 You have learned how the United States introduced our civilization into Japan.  It also opened Korea to the rest of the world.  In 1882 one of our navel officers, Commodore R.W. Shufeldt, was sent to this country.  His vessel entered the harbor of Chemul-pho, and he there made a treaty by which the King of Korea consented to open his land to all nations.  Since then travelers have been permitted to go where they please.  The Koreans are now exceedingly hospitable.  We shall find ourselves treated as guests, and we can learn much about this curious country.

Korea is a mountainous peninsula of about the same shape as Florida, and not much greater than Kansas in area.  It is bounded on the northwest and northeast by Manchuria and southeastern Siberia, and is separated on each side from Japan and China by boisterous seas.  Its shores are rocky and peppered with islands.  It contains many fertile valleys covered with rice, and streams by the hundred flow down its green hills.  We shall find its soil rich, but nowhere well farmed.  The climate is much the same as that of our North Central States, and we shall notice that the trees are not very different from those we have at home.  In the mountains there are rich mines of gold, and valuable coal fields which have not yet been worked; and in a recent trip across the country the author saw many signs of petroleum.

 Korea has numerous birds and many wild animals.  We shall not dare to travel at night for fear of the tigers, and we may shoot a leopard as we ride through the mountains.  The country contains about twelve million people, who live in a few large cities and numerous villages.  Both the towns and their inhabitants are unlike those of any other part of the world, and we rub our eyes again and again, wondering whether we are really still on our own planet, or whether by magic during the night we have not sailed into one of he stars, or perhaps into the lands of the moon. 

 We sail around the foot of the peninsula and halfway up the west coast until we come to the harbor Chemulpho.  This is the port for the capital, the city of Seoul, which is situated twenty-six miles back from the seacoast, on the other side of a small mountain range,  We see white-gowned figures walking like ghosts over the hills as we enter the harbor, and a crowd of Koreans surrounds us as we land on the shore.

 What curious people they are!  Many of them dress like women, but their faces are men's.  They are not Chinese, and still they are yellow.  They are not Japanese, thought their eyes are like almonds in shape.  They are taller than the Chinese we have in America, and their faces are kinder, though a little more stolid.  They have cheek bones as high as those of an Indian, and their noses are almost as flat a negro’s.  They are stronger and heavier than the men of Japan, and some carry great burdens of all kinds of wares. 

At the top there is the king, who governs the country, and who has vast estates and acres of palaces.  He lives in great state, and his officials must all get down on their knees when they meet him.  There are nobles by hundreds, who strut about in gorgeous silk dresses, who own the most of the land, and who live by taxing the rest of the people.  They are the drones of the country.  They spend their days in smoking and chatting, and they fan themselves as they ride through the streets in chairs carried by their big-hatted servants. 

 There are government clerks by the thousand, dressed in white gowns, who earn their living as scribes for the nobles.  They act as policemen and tax-gatherers, and often oppress the people below them.  There are farmers, merchants, mechanics, and slaves; and the men of each class have their own costume, by which we may know them.  The gowns of the clerks have tight sleeves, while those of the nobles are so big that they hang down form their wrists like bags.  No one can do hard work with this arms enveloped in bags, and the sleeve of a Korean noble cold hold a baby.

We see servants and slaves dressed in jackets and full pantaloons of white cotton.  They have stockings so padded that their feet seem to be swelled out or gouty, and almost burst the low shoes which they wear.  The gowns are of all colors, from the brightest rose pink to the most delicate sky blue, and the men who wear them go about with a strut, and swing their arms to and fro, as they walk up and look at us, the strange foreigners who have come to their country.

 But the queerest of all, to our eyes, are the hats and headdresses.  Some heads show out under great bowls of white straw as big as an umbrella, and others are decorated with little hats of black horsehair, which cover only the crown of the head, and which are tied on the ribbons under the chin.  This is the high hat of Korea, which, like our tall silk hat, is considered the mark of the gentleman; and as we go on we shall find that each hat has its meaning.

 

But there come two men with no hats at all.  They look very humble, and they slink along through the crowd, as if ashamed.  They part their hair in the middle, and wear it in long braids down their backs.  Those are Korean bachelors, and until they are married they will have not rights which any one is bound to respect.  Only married men can wear hats in Korea, and those without wives, weather they be fifteen or fifty, are boys and are treated as such.

Married men wear their hair done up in a topknot of about the size of a baby’s fist.  This is tied with a cord, and it stands strait up on the crown of the head like a handle.  Unmarried men and boys are obliged to wear their hair down their backs.  They tie the long braids with ribbons, and look more like girls than boys.  The Korean women, as we shall learn farther on, are seldom seen on the streets, and we meet only men and boys at the landing.

But let us travel over the mountains, and visit the great city of Seoul.  It is the largest city of Korea, and it is the home of the king and his court.  It is only twenty-six miles from Chemulpho, the chief seaport, and there is a railroad connecting the two places.  We shall travel in the old Korean fashion, however.  We ride in Korean chairs, each of the party sitting cross-legged in a cloth-lined box swung between poles and carried by four big-hatted coolies.  As we go, we tremble at the prospect of not reaching Seoul before dark, for we fear that we might have to stay outside all night if we should get there after sunset.

The Korean capital is surrounded by a massive stone wall as tall as a three-story house, and so broad at the top that two carriages abreast could easily be driven upon it.  This wall was built by an army of two hundred thousand workmen five hundred years ago for the defense of the city, but it is in good condition today, and it can be entered only by the eight great gates which go through it.  These gates are closed every night just at dusk by heavy doors plated with iron, which are not opened again until about three o’clock in the morning.  The signal for their closing, as for their opening, is the ringing of a big bell in the center of the city, after which those who are outside cannot get in, and those who are inside cannot get out.  We now but one word in Korean, which means "go on," or "hurry".  We cry out this word again and again, until we are hoarse.  Our coolies go on the trot, and we reach Seoul in time to climb to the top of the walls and take a view of the city before the gates close. 

Seoul lies in a basin surrounded by mountains, which in some places are as rugged and ragged as the wildest peaks of the Rockies, and which in others are as beautifully green as the Alleghenies or the Catskills.  The tops of these mountains rest in the clouds, and as we look we see watch fires burning upon them, and learn that these form the telegraph system of Korea.  They are the last of a series of fires which flash from hill to hill all over the country and by their number and size tell the king whether the people of his various provinces are at peace or about to break out into war.  The wall around the city climbs upon these mountains.  It bridges a stream at the back.  It runs up and down hill and valley, enclosing a plain about three miles square, in which lies the city of Seoul.

 

What a curious city it is!  Imagine three hundred thousand people living in one-story houses.  Picture sixty thousand houses, ninety-nine out of every hundred of them build of mud and thatched with straw.  Think of a city where the men are dressed in long gowns, where the ladies are not seen on the streets, and where the chief businesses of all seems to be to smoke, to squat, and to eat; and you have some idea of Seoul.

 It is altogether different from our cities of the same size.  Cut the houses of a great American city down to the height of ten feet, and how would it look?  Tear away the walls of brick, stone, and wood, and in their places build up structures of cobblestones put together with un-burnt mud.  Slice the big buildings into little ones, and move the mud walls out to the roadway.  Next, run dirty ditches along the edges of the now narrowed streets.  Cover the houses with straw roofs, and over the whole tie a network of clotheslines; and you have a general idea of the Korean capital.

 As you look, you think of a vast harvest field filled with big haycocks, interspersed here and there with tiled barns, and with a great enclosure of more imposing barns under the mountains at the back.  The haycocks are the huts of the poor, the tiled barns are homes of the nobles, and the great enclosure contains the palaces of the king.  The nobles live in large yards back from the street.  Their houses look much like those of Japan.  They have walls of paper between the rooms, and they are heated by flues which run under the floor. 

But, as we are looking over Seoul, the sun drops down back of the mountains.  The great bell in the center of the city peals out its knell, and the keepers close the gate doors with a bang.  Similar ceremonies are going on at the other gates of the city, and that bell, like curfew of the Middle Ages, sounds the close of the day.  We climb down the steps on the inside of the wall, and take our seats again into our chairs.  We do not go to a hotel, but our coolies take us to the home of the American minister, who is a friend of the author, and who entertains us during our stay.