Chapter VII

EN ROUTE FOR THE FRONT.

In Japan you must take the advice of St. Paul and follow after patience. No country teaches the lesson so thoroughly. In Tokyo the patience of hope gave place to the patience of despair, yet we had promise of recompense. Captain Tanaka, the genial and inscrutable aide-de-camp of General Kodama, wrote to me these words: “The men of great patience will, I think, be crowned with an invaluable reward and unfathomable blessing by Heaven!” I was beginning to doubt if I should live long enough to wear that crown when the order came to march. Whither we were not told and did not stop to inquire, for Japanese generals, like soldiers of other countries, love to clothe in mystery their most obvious movements and prefer always to “drink tea by strategy.” It was enough that we were to proceed to Chemulpo and there await further commands.

From Chemulpo we were ordered at once to Chianampo in the transport Suminoye Maru. At dawn on April 10th we approached the mouth of the Salee river and saw before us a glorious panorama of sea and shore. Gleaming like a sheet of steel the channel stretched away in the grey distance studded with brown bosses of islet and rock, like a huge buckler slung before the harbour.

On the afternoon of April 12th, I left Chianampo with my interpreter, Mr. Ito, and proceeded to Pyng-yang where orders awaited us. Weather and hard usage had wiped out every trace of a track, and when my restive Chinese pony was not wallowing in mire he was doing a tight rope performance on a few inches of crumbling earth over the slimy depths of a paddy field. After many hours we came to Ayshin, a squalid hamlet of wattle walls in which lived and died the famous Chinese classic Kwantaishi, whose essays are known to every scholar in the East.

Yongan was my resting place for the night. Here I was received by the pay-master of a regiment of the Guards--a banker and former member of the Japanese Parliament, who had quartered himself in the gaol, which was certainly cleaner than any house in the village. Next morning my host presented me with two sticks used for punishing criminals. They are of hard wood about an inch square, inscribed with Chinese characters denoting the number of strokes under which the unhappy offender often dies. I resumed my journey under dismal conditions, for rain had fallen in the night and a dense fog overhung the castle on the hill in which Kato and the early Japanese invaders of Korea were besieged and reduced to such straits that they ate the mud walls.

[Illustration: In comfortable Quarters.]

[Illustration: My Interpreter and Staff.]

For ten miles I waded through a quagmire, and my horse was mired to the girths. Rain was still falling when I entered Kang-sye, a foul village reeking with ages of filth. Our meal of rice that evening was supplemented by two small birds, shot by an intelligent sergeant, who also presented to me a manuscript copy of the Korean laws, and two volumes of the history of Korea. Next morning the native Governor arrived to pay his respects to the colonel in command of the depot. He was an old man with the white beard of which Koreans are proud. His top-knot was concealed under a black net of horsehair, over which was a white hat, shaped like an upturned flower pot on a round table. This strange head-gear is made of bamboo, split to a fineness of a silk thread, and is the most distinctive feature in a Korean scene. Under his loose white robe the Governor wore a sleeveless waistcoat of purple. His dignity, and not his feebleness, required the support of two retainers, who held the magistrate under his arms as he stepped into the colonel’s room and squatted on the matted floor. He had complaint to make of rice stolen, women frightened, and shrines desecrated by the stalling of horses. The colonel explained that offences of this kind were severely punished, but that misunderstandings must arise owing to the difference in language. He urged the Governor to encourage the people to return to their homes as seed time was drawing near, and impressed on him the urgency of repairing the roads.

From Kang-sye to Pyng-yang the journey was easy. The rain had ceased, and the road was comparatively hard. Between the coast and the city is an unbroken succession of mountains and valleys. The slopes of the hills are cultivated, and the flats are paddy fields. The soil is fertile, but the cultivation is primitive, and the people are indolent. Rice, which is the staple food, is grown everywhere in great quantities, and on every hand are fields of maize, barley and millet. The Koreans are meat eaters, and breed immense herds of cattle, most of which had been driven into the mountains in order to keep the soldiers out of temptation. The ox is the common beast of burden, and near Ping-yang I saw long lines of them laden with packs. They are fine animals, much larger than the Japanese oxen, and are hardy and tractable. We approached the city across a broad plain, which stretches South-east to a distance of thirty miles. On the North and West are wooded heights that reach within two or three miles of the walls. Round the city proper is a wall of irregular shape, from six to seven miles in circumference. The Eastern wall is thirty feet high, surmounted by a crenelated parapet, and rises sheer from the bank of the river Tai-tong, which is two hundred yards broad and twenty feet deep at this point. On the South is the old city, surrounded by an earth wall, from ten to fifteen feet high, broken down in many places, and embracing an area of three miles by two.

Entering through a broad gate guarded by Japanese sentries we traversed street after street of thatched houses and shops crowded with soldiers and Koreans, who appeared to be doing a brisk trade in the common necessities of life. The smells and abominations of the city are surpassed--in my experience--only by those of Jerusalem. There is one clean spot, and that is the American Mission, which is doing excellent work, and reports most favourably on the intelligence of the youth of the country, their eagerness to learn, and their capacity for developing domestic virtues. The Koreans are commonly supposed to have no religion except a complicated system of ancestor worship. This is an error, for they also worship demons, and are full of strange superstitions. Walking at night through one of the main streets--which in the darkness I mistook for a sewer--my attention was arrested by the tinkling of a bell, accompanied by a droning chant. Mr. Graham Lee, an American missionary, guided me to a group of natives squatted at the door of a house. In the middle of the throng sat a blind man tinkling a tiny brass bell with a shell, and muttering an incantation over a bowl of rice, some pickles, and three small cups of native spirit. He was exorcising the devil that had entered a man who lay sick in the house, and the food and drink were to tempt the evil spirit out of doors. The duty of exorcist is the special province of the blind, who are the wizards of the land.

I remained in Pyng-yang no longer than was necessary to secure a permit to travel North, and to change some Japanese notes for the current coin. Owing to the issue of nickles, the intrinsic value of which is only one-eighteenth of their face value--without gold or silver to redeem them--the number of counterfeit coins is enormous. Spurious money is imported in large quantities from Japan, and permission to coin nickles is freely granted to private individuals who can pay for the privilege of robbing their neighbours. The only medium of exchange is the half yang, of which twenty make one shilling, so that the bulk and weight of even a few days’ expenditure are serious considerations for the traveller. Cash, circular pieces of brass with a square hole, are also in circulation.

At Syunan--a typical hamlet of mud walls and thatched roofs--I was assigned to quarters in the house of a wealthy native who owns the country-side. His abode differed only in size from that of his poorest neighbour, for a corrupt government and official exactions not merely destroy incentive to industry and enterprise but create a semblance of indigence among the well-to-do who wish to retain their property. Four mud walls and a mud floor, not over clean, gave me shelter, and I shivered all night in my fur coat, for I travelled with nothing more than my saddle bags in order that my progress might not be impeded. To my ration of rice and beef the owner of the house added some ducks’ eggs and an infusion of wheat--the native substitute for tea.

On the way to Anju next day I passed miles of transport. The road was white with Koreans laden with rice packed in straw for the Japanese army. The coolie is strong and capable of much endurance. He will walk--as I afterwards discovered--fifty miles a day for a week or more; but he is unreliable, improvident, and incorrigibly lazy. He carries his load on a small wooden frame called a “chikai,” fastened to the shoulders with straw-padded loops. His ordinary burden is eighty pounds, and a day’s march is sixty li or twenty miles. The Japanese hired them of headmen, and paid by distance and load, so that they secured a cheap and ready transport in a country where wheeled traffic is almost unknown. They also made use of oxen, donkeys, and ponies. The Korean pony is very hardy, stands from eleven to thirteen hands, and can carry from 150 to 200 lbs. thirty miles a day. His feed is a hot mash, and he is not allowed to drink cold water. His nostrils are slit to make him long winded, and on the whole he is a very serviceable little beast, though his morals are those of the poultry yard, and his vices are legion.

At dusk we were still winding our weary way over mountains, through passes and across valleys. Anju seemed a myth, but at night we entered the city and were hospitably received by the Japanese. It is a town of some importance, and stands on an eminence surrounded by a wall built for defence against incursions from the North. The streets are narrow and foul, and the hovels were crowded to overflowing with soldiers on their way to the front. In the early morning I left Anju, and crossing a broad river rode over a sandy plain that was at one time the bed of a torrent. A few miles of broken country brought me to another water course which, like most of the rivers of Korea, is shallow and channelless. The Japanese had bridged this river, but in order to avoid a long diversion I passed over in a ferry boat or lighter. By way of Kasan I reached Tyon-ju on the 17th of April, having to travel through very wild country and to walk eighteen miles, dragging behind me a very weary horse. It was close upon midnight when I presented myself at the depot, only to find the officer in command too much occupied with a gift of oxen from the King of Korea to give heed to the “European gentleman” who came hungry and footsore.

At Syen-chen, where I haltered next night, I had a delightful welcome from the American Mission, of which Dr. Sharrocks is the head. Head-quarters of the army were at Sharenkwan--a short day’s march--and on the 19th of April Mr. McKenzie of the _Daily Mail_ (who had overtaken me at Tyon-ju, where I was detained by a slight accident through miscalculating the height of a Korean door) and I were presented to General Fujii, Chief of the Staff. We were just in time, for head-quarters moved next day to Hiken-min-jori, and on the following morning to the vicinity of Wiju, where we found the army preparing to force the passage of the Yalu.