ldren on their backs, thus creating a
mutual warmth in a slight degree, but it is in this way that the
little ones' feet, sticking out from the binding basket, get
frozen and afterwards fester till the tiny toes stick together.
Old men and women, with bent backs and wrinkled faces, walk the
uncomplaining miles until their old limbs refuse to call them
further.

"Thus it is by households they come, old and young, weak and
strong, big and little.... Babies have been born in wayside inns.

"In this way over 75,000 Koreans have entered during the past
year, until the number of Koreans now living in both the north
and western portions of Manchuria now totals nearly half a
million."[2]

[Footnote 2: Report to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign
Missions.]

XII

THE MISSIONARIES

I have had occasion in previous chapters to make occasional reference to
the work of the missionaries in Korea. It is necessary now to deal with
them in detail, for they had become one of the great factors, and from the
Japanese point of view one of the great problems, of the country.

Long before Korea was open to the outside world, missionary pioneers tried
to enter it. The French Catholics forced admission as far back as the end
of the eighteenth century, and made many converts, who were afterwards
exterminated. Gutzaleff, a famous Protestant pioneer, landed on an island
at Basil's Bay, in 1832, and remained there a month, distributing Chinese
literature. Mr. Thomas, a British missionary, secured a passage on board
the ill-fated _General Sherman_ in 1866, and was killed with the rest of
the crew. Dr. Ross, the Scottish Presbyterian missionary of Moukden,
Manchuria, became interested in the Koreans, studied their language, talked
with every Korean he could find, and built up a grammar of the language,
publishing an English-Korean primer in 1876. He and a colleague, Mr.
McIntyre, published Gospels in the language, and opened up a work among the
Koreans on the north side of the Yalu. Those who can recall the state of
that district in the days before railways were opened and order
established, can best appreciate the nerve and daring needed for the task.
They made converts, and one of these converts took some newly printed
Christian books and set back home, reaching Seoul itself, spreading the new
religion among his friends.

It was two years after the opening of Kore