Korea (Hamilton)/Chapter 1

DEVIL POST OUTSIDE SEOUL Despite the survey work which has been accomplished in the past by the Japanese upon the coasts of Korea, little knowledge of the numerous islands and archipelagoes, shoals and reefs which make its shores the terror of all mariners, exists at present. Until the voyage of the Alceste and Lyra in 1816, the locality of these detached groups of rocky islets was not marked on any of the Japanese or Chinese maps of the period. In the map of the Empire prepared by the Jesuits at Pekin in the seventeenth century, the space now occupied by the Korean Archipelago was covered with the drawing of an elephant—the conventional sign of ignorance with the cartographers of that time. In the older native maps, the mainland embraced groups of islands, the most imperfect ​knowledge of the physical configuration of their own shores prevailing among the Koreans. In quite recent days, however, the Korean Government has recognised this fact, and in the early months of 1903 the Japanese Government was requested to draw up a complete survey of the Hermit Kingdom. This work is now in process of execution, the plan of the coastline already having been completed.

The coast of Korea is remarkable for the number of spacious harbours which distinguish it. Upon the West and South, indications of the volcanic period, through which the country has in part passed, are shown by the frequency with which these island groups occur. From a single peak upon one of the small islands off the south-west coast, as many as one hundred and thirty-five islets may be counted, stretching to the North and to the South, the resort of the sea-fowl; desolate and almost uninhabited. Many of the more important islands have been cultivated, and give refuge and a lonely home to small communities of fishing-folk.

Navigation is peculiarly dangerous in these waters. Many of the islands are submerged by the spring-tides, and the direction of the channels, scoured by the rush of the tide, becomes quite indefinite. In the absence of charts and maps, these island-fringed shores have been the scene of many shipwrecks; Dutch, American, French, and British shipping meeting in one grim and silent procession a common end: captivity on shore or death in the sea. Some of these unfortunate mariners survived their experiences, leaving, after the fashion of Hendrik Hamel, the supercargo of the Dutch frigate Sparwehr, which went ashore oft Quelpart in 1653, records and histories of their adventures to an incredulous posterity. Most of the islands ​lying off the coast are well wooded. As they are very beautiful to look upon and very dangerous to approach, they are regarded with mingled sentiments of reverence and superstition, differing little, in their expression, from the fear in which the ancients held the terrors of Scylla and Charybdis. Their isolated position, moreover, makes them the centre of much contraband trade between the Chinese and Koreans; their defenceless state renders them an easy prey to any pirates who care to ravage them.

The islands off the south-west coast are the sanctuaries of many animals. Seals sport and play unharmed among the rocks; the woody peaks are rich in game: teal, crane, curlew, quail, and innumerable small birds make them their breeding-grounds. The shores are happy hunting-grounds for naturalists, and a variety of marine food is found throughout the archipelago. A number of well-marked species of sponge may be gathered, and the coral beds display many violent tints and delicate shades, forming in their beautiful colourings a sea garden of matchless splendour. The flora of these islands is a no less brilliant feature of the summer landscape. Tiger-lilies, showy and gigantic, daisies, asters, many varieties of cactus, grow side by side with curious ferns, palms and creepers, almost tropical in their character and profusion, yet surviving the cooler temperature of autumn and winter, to greet each coming spring with freshened beauty. The air vibrates with the singing and buzzing of insects, the limpid day is bright with gaudy butterflies. Snow-white herons stand in the shallows. Cormorants, diving birds and ducks throng the reefs to rise in clouds with many angry splutterings when their haunts are invaded. In the deeper waters, there are myriads of fish; in passing from group to group along the coast ​shoals of whales are to be seen, blowing columns of spray aloft, or sleeping idly upon the surface.

The coast of Korea is well sprinkled with the names of foreign navigators, who, in previous centuries, essayed to visit the Land of the Morning Radiance. With rare exceptions, these visitors were turned back. Some were captured and tortured; many were ordered off at once, few were ever entertained. None were invited to make any stay in the new land, or permitted to inspect its wonders and curiosities. Beyond the Japanese, those who succeeded in sapping the wall of isolation which was so carefully built around the country and so rigorously maintained, were generally escorted inland as prisoners, the unconscious victims of some successful stratagem. In a manner, the fashion of their treatment is revealed in the curious names with which these pioneers of navigation have labelled the capes and promontories, the islands and shoals, which they were lucky enough to locate and whose dangers they were fortunate enough to avoid. Many of these names have ceased to be recognised. The lapse of time has caused them to be obliterated by European hydrographers from the maps and charts of the country and seas, in which their originators had risked so much. In many parts of the coast, however, particularly upon the west, along the shores of the Chyung-chyöng Province, these original names have been preserved. They form, to-day, a tribute to the earnestness and intrepidity of these early explorers. This mead of recognition is only just, and is not to be denied to their undoubted gallantry and enterprise.

It is not impossible to believe that an unusually fickle fate followed in their footsteps, prompting them to leave thus for the guidance of future generations, some hint of ​their own miscalculations. If one may judge, from the brief narratives which these discoverers have left behind them, the result of their work upon these inhospitable shores surpassed anything that they had foreseen. The visit of these hardy spirits aroused the curiosity of the Koreans, giving to them their first knowledge of that outer world which they had spurned for centuries. Despite the golden opportunities now presented to them, however, they continued to neglect it. The memory of the black ships and the red beards (Dutchmen)—as they dubbed the strange craft and stranger devils, that had to appear only off their shores to be shipwrecked—dwelt long in their minds. Although they treated these strangers with comparative generosity, they were careful to preserve inviolate the secrets and sanctity of their land. They rejected with contumacy the friendly overtures of strangers who came in monster ships, and who, forsooth, left behind nothing but a name. It is scarcely astonishing, therefore, that there are many points upon the coast of Korea which bear somewhat uncomplimentary names. Deception Bay, Insult Island, and False River savour of certain physical discomforts, which, too great to be borne in silence, left an indelible impression upon the associations of the spot.

If the Dutch sailors of 1627 were among the earliest to reach the forbidding shores of this kingdom, the activities of British voyagers were most prominent in the succeeding century. The work of Captain W. R. Broughton, of the British sloop-o'-war, of sixteen guns, Providence, is described to this day by the bays and harbours into which he penetrated, and the capes and straits which this gallant man christened, to the credit of the distant island kingdom from which he hailed. Broughton in 1797, Maxwell of the ​Alceste, with Basil Hall, commander of the British sloop-o'-war, the Lyra, in 1816, deserve the passing fame which is secured to them by the waters and capes which have been named after them. Their names figure as landmarks upon the west, the east, and the south coasts. While Maxwell and Hall preferred to devote their attention to the discovery and examination of the Korean Archipelago—of which, although Broughton does not mention it, it seems impossible that the discoverer of Broughton Strait can have been ignorant—Broughton roughly charted and surveyed the west coasts, coming to a temporary halt in Broughton Bay, some six hundred miles to the north. Hall left his name in Basil's Bay, where Gutzlaff landed in 1832 to plant potatoes and to leave seeds and books. A generation later, in 1866, the archipelago to the north-west was named after the Prince Imperial, who was to meet his death in Zululand in 1878. In 1867, Prince Jerome's Gulf, an inlet upon the mainland of the Chyung-chyöng Province, was to be the scene of Oppert's famous attempt to remove large deposits of buried treasure and venerated relics from an Imperial tomb. These names upon the east and west coasts suggest nothing of the romance which actually surrounds them. At most they conjure up the shadowy silhouettes of the redoubtable personages, to whom they once belonged, and with whose memory many journeys of discovery in these seas are inseparably linked.

Englishmen were not the sole navigators who were attracted by the unknown character of the land, and the surpassing dangers of the waters, around the Island of Quelpart, where the Sea of Japan mingles in tempestuous chaos with the Yellow Sea. Russian and French navigators also worked their way through the dangerous shoals and ​quicksands, along the tortuous and muddy rivers, into the harbours and through the narrow straits which hold back these islands from the mainland. The shores teem with the distinguished names of men of science and sons of the high seas. Following the curl and twist of its configuration a host of buried names are revealed, the last evidence of men who are dead and forgotten. It is infinitely pathetic that even this one last resting-place should be denied to their reputations. Lazareli, who shares Broughton's Bay; Unkoffsky, who foundered in the waters of the bay which is described by his name; the ill-fated La Pérouse, who, in June 1787, discovered in the Sea of Japan an island which now bears the name of the astronomer—Dagelet. Durock, Pellisier, Schwartz, and the rest—what echo do we find of them, their fates, and subsequent careers? Should not their names at least bear witness to their pains and labours, to the difficulties which they faced, to the small joy of something attempted, something done, which was their sole consolation for many hours of cheerless and empty vigil?

Korea is a land of exceptional beauty. The customs, the literature, and the geographical nomenclature of the kingdom prove that the superb and inspiring scenery of the peninsula is quite appreciated by the people. In the same manner that the coast-line of Korea bears evidence of the adventurous spirit of many western mariners, the names given to the mountains and rivers of the country by the inhabitants themselves reflect the simplicity, the crudity, and the supersition of their ideas and beliefs. All mountains are personified in Korea. In the popular belief, they are usually associated with dragons. Every village offers sacrifices to the mountain-spirits. Shrines are erected by the wayside and in the mountain passes that travellers may tender their offerings ​to the spirits and secure their goodwill. The Koreans believe that the mountains in some way exert a benign and protecting influence. The capital of Korea possesses its guardian-mountain. Every town relies upon some preserving power to maintain its existence. Graves, too, must have their custodian peaks, or the family will not prosper, and the impression prevails that people are born in accordance with the conformation of the hills upon which the tombs of their ancestors are situated. Rough and rugged contours make for warriors and militant males. Smooth surfaces and gentle descents beget scholars; peaks of singular charm and position are associated with beautiful women. Like the mountain-ranges, lakes and pools, rivers and streams exercise geomantic powers, and they are the abodes of presiding shades, benevolent or pernicious. In lakes, there are dragons and lesser monsters. In mountain pools, however, no wraith exists unless some one is drowned in the waters of the pool. When this fatality occurs, the figure of the dead haunts the pool until released by the ghost of the next person who meets with this misfortune. The serpent is almost synonymous with the dragon. Certain fish become in time fish-dragons ; snakes become elevated to the dignity and imbued with the ferocity of dragons when they have spent one thousand years in the captivity of the mountains, and one thousand years in the water. All these apparitions may be propitiated with sacrifices and prayers.

In the province of Kang-won, through which the ranges of the Diamond Mountains pass, there are several peaks symbolical of this belief in the existence of supernatural monsters. One dizzy height is named the Yellow Dragon, a second the Flying Phœnix, and a third, the Hidden Dragon, has reference to a demon who has not yet risen ​from the earth upon his ascent to the clouds. The names which the Koreans give to their rivers, lakes and villages, as also to their mountains, bear out their wish to see the natural beauties of their land associated with its more distinctive

GUARDIAN OF A GRAVE

features. This idiosyncrasy, however, would seem to be exceptionally pronounced in the case of mountains. The Mountain fronting the Moon, the Mountain facing the Sun, the Tranquil Sea, the Valley of Cool Shade, and the Hill of White Clouds emphasise this desire. Again, in Hamkyöng, the most northern province in the Empire, the more conspicuous peaks receive such designations as the Peak of Continuous Virtue, the Peak of the Thousand Buddhas, the Lasting Peace, the Sword Mountain, Heaven Reaching Peak, the Cloud Toucher. It is evident, therefore, that appreciation of nature, no less than reverence for the supernatural, underlies the system by which they evolve ​names for the landmarks of their country. The peculiarities of their land afford great scope for such a practice, and it is to be admitted that they give ample vent to this peculiar trait in their imagination.

Korea is now an independent Empire. From very early times until 1895 the King of Korea was a vassal of China, but the complete renunciation of the authority of the Emperor of China was proclaimed in January 1895, by an Imperial decree. This was the fruit of the Chino-Japanese war, and it was ratified by China under the seal of the treaty of peace signed at Shimonosaki in May of the same year. The monarchy is hereditary, and the present dynasty has occupied the throne of Korea in continuous entail since 1392. Inhabited by a people whose traditions and history extend over a period of five thousand years, and subjected to kaleidoscopic changes whereby smaller tribes were absorbed by larger, and weaker governments overthrown by stronger, Korea has gradually evolved one kingdom, which, embracing all units under her own protection, has presented to the world through centuries a more or less composite and stable authority. There can be no doubt that the whilom vassal of China, in respect of which China and Japan made war, has taken much greater strides upon the path of progress than her ancient neighbour and liege lord. There is no question of the superiority of the conditions under which the Koreans in Seoul live and those prevailing in Pekin, when each city is regarded as the capital of its country—the representative centre in which all that is best and brightest congregates.

It was in 1876 that Korea made her first modern treaty. It was not until three years later that any exchange of envoys took place between the contracting party and ​herself. Despite the treaty, Korea showed no disposition to profit by the existence of her new relations, until the opening of Chemulpo to trade in the latter part of 1883 revealed to her the commercial advantages which she was

now in a position to enjoy. All this time China had been in intercourse with foreigners. Legations had been established in her capital ; consuls were in charge of the open ports ; commercial treaties had been arranged. She was already old and uncanny in the wisdom which came to her by this dealing with the people of Western nations. But, in a spirit of perversity without parallel in constitutional history, China retired within herself to such a degree that Japan, within one generation, has advanced to the position of a Great Power, and even Korea has become, within twenty years, the superior of her former liege. In less ​than a decade Korea has promoted works of an industrial or humanitarian character which China, at the present time, is bitterly and fatally opposing. It is true that the liberal tendencies of Korea have been stimulated by association with the Japanese. Without the guiding hand of that energetic country the position which she would enjoy to-day is infinitely problematical. The contact has been wholly beneficial. Its continuation forms the strongest guarantee of the eventual development of the resources of the kingdom.