to any man; hence the seclusion of the women. I need scarcely add that
from this stalwart first Corean and his pale bride all the present race
is descended.

The mandarin at Gen San came on board, attended with great
ceremony--flags, banners, pennons, soldiers, and trumpeters, in boat
loads; the latter gentlemen being furnished with brass instruments, such
as angels are usually depicted with, but which can be made to shut up
like a telescope to vary the music. The men are certainly a fine
race--tall and upright as an arrow, and rather intelligent looking than
otherwise. They wear long coarsely-fabricated, white cotton garments,
split up behind, in front and on the hips--all tails in fact; but the
great national peculiarity seems to be the hats, some made of bamboo,
others of horse hair, of very delicate net or gauze work, and shaped
like a reversed flower pot with a rim attached. Its purpose cannot be to
keep the head warm, to protect it from the rain, or to answer any other
purpose to which a hat may be applied: for instance you could not get a
drink of water by means of it, nor would it serve as a pillow. The
ordinary color of these hats is black, but in consequence of the queen's
demise they now don a white one--white being, as in China, the symbol of
mourning. Some who cannot afford, or have not the inclination, to
purchase a white one, paste a patch of white paper over the crown of the
black one which answers the purpose just as well.

They betray a weakness for rum, and a knowledge of the vessels in which
it is usually issued on board a man-of-war, scarcely credited of a
people who have so few means of acquiring such familiarity. But so it
is, and if noses can be accepted as indices of truth in such matters,
something stronger than water has been used in tinting them.

The soldiers of the party presented the appearance of guys, rather than
men of "fight." What do you say to a mixed uniform of pink and light
blue glazed calico, over dingy under-garments of impossible analysis,
and a mushroom hat of the coarsest felt, with the distinguishing red
horse hair attached to the crown; wooden shot and powder pouches of the
roughest and rudest make slung across the shoulders by a piece of thin
cord? And such shot! irregular pellets of raw iron and lead, of which
all I can say is that dying by such help would be far from an aesthetic
operation. And yet these same soldiers, as a mere pastime, are employed
in a service whic