d the action of the Japanese soldiers when repressing the uprising in
Seoul itself. Yet, whether the stories of the refugees were true or false,
undeniably some interesting fighting was going on.

By the first week in September it was clear that the area of trouble
covered the eastern provinces from near Fusan to the north of Seoul. The
rebels were evidently mainly composed of discharged soldiers and of hunters
from the hills. We heard in Seoul that trained officers of the old Korean
Army were drilling and organizing them into volunteer companies. The
Japanese were pouring fresh troops into these centres of trouble, but the
rebels, by an elaborate system of mountain-top signalling, were avoiding
the troops and making their attacks on undefended spots. Reports showed
that they were badly armed and lacked ammunition, and there seemed to be no
effective organization for sending them weapons from the outside.

The first rallying-place of the malcontent Koreans was in a mountain
district from eighty to ninety miles east of Seoul. Here lived many famous
Korean tiger-hunters. These banded themselves together under the title of
Eui-pyung (the "Righteous Army"). They had conflicts with small parties of
Japanese troops and secured some minor successes. When considerable
Japanese reinforcements arrived they retired to some mountain passes
further back.

The tiger-hunters, sons of the hills, iron-nerved, and operating in their
own country, were naturally awkward antagonists even for the best regular
troops. They were probably amongst the boldest sportsmen in the world, and
they formed the most picturesque and, romantic section of the rebels. Their
only weapon was an old-fashioned percussion gun, with long barrel and a
brass trigger seven to eight inches in length. Many of them fired not from
the shoulder, but from the hip. They never missed. They could only fire one
charge in an attack, owing to the time required to load. They were trained
to stalk the tiger, to come quite close to it, and then to kill it at one
shot The man who failed once died; the tiger attended to that.

Some of the stories of Korean successes reaching Seoul were at the best
improbable. The tale of one fight, however, came to me through so many
different and independent sources that there was reason to suspect it had
substantial foundation. It recalled the doings of the people of the Tyrol
in their struggle against Napoleon. A party of Japanese soldiers,
fort