utters. Grain merchants and vegetable dealers jostled
each other in the streets themselves. In and about among them played the
boys of the city, not even half-clothed in most cases. There were no
parks and playgrounds for them such as you have. Often, too, boys would
be seen cantering through the streets, seated sidewise on the bare backs
of ponies, caring nothing for passers-by, ponies, or each
other--laughing, chatting, eating chestnuts. Other boys would be
carrying on their heads small round tables covered with dishes of rice,
pork, cabbage, wine, and other things.

[Illustration: A STREET IN SEOUL]

Around the city was a great wall of stone fourteen miles in length. In
some places it clung to the edges of the mountains, and then dropped
into a deep ravine, again to climb a still higher mountain, perhaps. In
one direction it enclosed a forest, in another a barren plain. Great
blocks were the stones, that had been in place many, many years. It must
have taken hundreds and thousands of men to put them in position, and,
though the wall was hundreds of years old, it was still well preserved.
It was from twenty-five to forty feet high. The wall was hung from one
end of the city to the other with ivy, which looked as if it had been
growing in its place centuries before Yung Pak was born.

In the wall were eight gates, and at each one a keeper was stationed at
all hours of the day and night. No persons could come in or go out
unless their business was known to those who had charge of the passage.

Every evening, at sunset, the gates were closed, and during the night no
one was allowed to pass through in either direction.

A curious ceremony attended the closing of these gates. They were never
shut till the king had been notified that all was well on the north, on
the south, on the east, and on the west. As there were no telegraph
lines, another way had to be provided by which messages might be quickly
sent. Bonfires upon the surrounding hills were used as signals. By
these fires the king was told if all were well in his kingdom, and every
evening, as soon as the sun was set, four beacon-fires on a hill within
the walls told the news as it was flashed to them from the mountains
outside. Then four officers, whose business it was to report to the king
the message of the fires, hastened to him, and with great ceremony and
much humility announced that all was well. On this the royal band of
music would strike up its livelies