the capital, the
distance by road being twenty-five miles, and partly owing to the fact
that it is never ice-bound in winter, the town has made wonderful
strides. As late as 1883 there were only one or two fishermen's huts
along the bay, but in 1892 the settlement contained a score of Europeans,
over 2800 Japanese souls, and 1000 Chinese, besides quite a
respectable-sized native conglomeration of houses and huts.

When I visited the port, land fetched large sums of money in the central
part of the settlement. The post-office was in the hands of the Japanese,
who carried on its business in a very amateurish and imperfect manner,
but the telegraphs were worked by the Chinese. The commercial competition
between the two Eastern nations now at war has of late years been very
great in Corea. It is interesting to notice how the slow Chinaman has
followed the footsteps of young Japan at nearly all the ports, especially
at Gensan and Fusan, and gradually monopolised a good deal of the trade,
through his honest dealings and steadiness. And yet the Chinese must have
been, of course, greatly handicapped by the start of many years which the
dashing Japanese had over them, as well as by the much larger number of
their rivals. A very remarkable fact, however, is that several Japanese
firms had employed Chinese as their _compradores_, a position entirely of
trust, these being the officials whose duty it is to go round to collect
money and cheques, and who are therefore often entrusted with very large
sums of money.

But now let us come to the foreigners stranded in the Corean kingdom. If
you take them separately, they are rather nice people, though, of course,
at least a dozen years behind time as compared with the rest of the
world; taken as a community, however, they are enough to drive you crazy.
I do not think that it was ever my good fortune to hear a resident speak
well of another resident, this being owing, I dare say, to their seeing
too much of one another. If by chance you come across a man occupying
only a second-rate official position, you may depend upon it you will see
airs! One hardly ventures to address any such personage, for so grand is
he that, he will hardly condescend to say "How do you do?" to you, for
fear of lowering himself. There are only about four cats in the place,
and their sole subject of conversation is precedence and breaches of
etiquette, when you would imagine that in such a distant land, and away,
s