Corean architecture is in a very primitive condition. The castles, fortifications, temples, monasteries and public buildings cannot approach in magnificence those of Japan or China. The country, though boasting hoary antiquity, has few ruins in stone. The dwellings are tiled or thatched houses, almost invariably one story high. In the smaller towns these are not arranged in regular streets, but scattered here and there. Even in the cities and capital the streets are narrow and tortuous.

In the rural parts, the houses of the wealthy are embosomed in beautiful groves, with gardens surrounded by charming hedges or fences of rushes or split-bamboo. The cities show a greater display of red-tiled roofs, as only the officials and nobles are allowed this sumptuary honor. Shingles are not much used. The thatching is of rice or barley straw, cut close, with ample eaves, and often finished with great neatness.

A low wall of uncemented stone, five or six feet high, surrounds the dwelling, and when kept in repair gives an air of neatness and imposing solidity to the estate. Often a pretty rampart of flat bamboo or rushes, plaited in the herring-bone pattern, surmounts the wall, which may be of pebbles or stratified rock and mortared. Sometimes the rampart is of wattle, covered with smooth white plaster, which, with the gateway, is also surmounted by an arched roofing of tiles. Instead of regular slanting lines of gables, one meets with the curved and pagoda-like roofs seen in China, with a heavy central ridge and projecting ornaments of fire-hardened clay, like the “stirrup” or “devil” tiles of Japan. These curves greatly add to the beauty of a Corean house, because they break the monotony of the lines of Corean architecture.

Doors, windows, and lintels are usually rectangular, and are set in regularly, instead of being made odd to relieve the eye, as in Japan. Bamboo is a common material for window-frames. [263]

The foundations are laid on stone set in the earth, and the floor of the humble is part of the naked planet. People one grade above the poorest cover the hard ground with sheets of oiled paper, which serve as rugs or a carpet. For the better class a floor of wood is raised a foot or so above the earth, but in the sleeping- and sitting-room of the average family, the “kang” forms a vaulted floor, bed, and stove.

The kang is characteristic of the human dwelling in northeastern Asia. It is a kind of tubular oven, in which human beings, instead of potatoes, are baked. It is as though we should make a bedstead of bricks, and put foot-stoves under it. The floor is bricked over, or built of stone over flues, which run from the fireplace, at one end of the house, to the chimney at the other. The fire which boils the pot or roasts the meat is thus utilized to warm those sitting or sleeping in the room beyond. The difficulty is to keep up a regular heat without being alternately chilled or smothered. With wood fuel this is almost impossible, but by dint of tact and regulated draught may be accomplished. As in the Swedish porcelain stove, a pail of live coals keeps up a good warmth all night. The kangs survive in the kotatsù of Japan.

The “fire” in sentiment and fact is the centre of the Corean home, and the native phrase, “he has put out his fire,” is the dire synonym denoting that a man is not only cold and fasting, but in want of the necessities of life.

Bed-clothes are of silk, wadded cotton, thick paper, and tiger, wolf, or dog skins, the latter often sewn in large sheets like a carpet. Comfort, cleanliness, and luxury make the bed of the noble on the warm brick in winter, or cool matting in summer; but with the poor, the cold of winter, and insects of summer, with the dirt and rags, make sleeping in a Corean hut a hardship. Cushions or bags of rice-chaff form the pillows of the rich. The poor man uses a smooth log of wood or slightly raised portion of the floor to rest his head upon. “Weariness can snore upon the flint when resty sloth finds the down pillow hard.”

Three rooms are the rule in an average house. These are for cooking, eating, and sleeping. In the kitchen the most noticeable articles are the ang-pak, or large earthen jars, for holding rice, barley, or water. Each of them is big enough to hold a man easily. The second room, containing the kang, is the sleeping apartment, and the next is the best room or parlor. Little furniture is the rule. Coreans, like the Japanese, sit, not cross-legged, [264]but on their heels. Among the well-to-do, dog-skins, or kat-tei, cover the floor for a carpet, or splendid tiger-skins serve as rugs. Matting is common, the best being in the south.

As in Japan, the meals are served on the floor on low sang, or little tables, one for each guest, sometimes one for a couple. The best table service is of porcelain, and the ordinary sort of earthenware with white metal or copper utensils. The table-cloths are of fine glazed paper and resemble oiled silk. No knives or forks are used; instead, chopsticks, laid in paper cases, and, what is more common than in China or Japan, spoons are used at every meal. The climax of æsthetic taste occurs when a set of historic porcelain and faience of old Corean manufacture and decoration, with the tall and long-spouted teapot, are placed on the pearl-inlaid table and filled with native delicacies.

The walls range in quality of decoration from plain mud to colored plaster and paper. The Corean wall-paper is of all grades, sometimes as soft as silk, or as thick as canvas. Sa-peik is a favorite reddish earth or mortar which serves to rough-cast in rich color tones the walls of a room.

Pictures are not common; the artistic sense being satisfied [265]with scrolls of handsome Chinese characters containing moral and literary gems from the classics, or the caligraphic triumph of some king, dignitary, or literary friend. To possess a sign-manual or autograph scrap of Yung, Hong, or O, the three most renowned men of Chō-sen, is reckoned more than a golden manuscript on azure paper.

The windows are square and latticed without or within, and covered with tough paper, either oiled or unsized, and moving in grooves—the originals of the Japanese sliding-doors and windows. In every part of a Corean house, paper plays an important and useful part.

Very fine Venetian blinds are made of threads split from the ever-useful bamboo, which secures considerable variety in window decoration. The doors are of wood, paper, or plaited bamboo. Glass was, till recently, a nearly unknown luxury in Corea among the common people. Even with the nobles, it is rather a curiosity. The windows being made of oiled or thin paper, glass is not a necessity. This fact will explain the eagerness of the people to possess specimens of this transparent novelty. Even old porter and ale bottles, which sailors have thrown away, are eagerly picked up, begged, bought, or stolen. An old medicine-vial, among the Coreans, used to fetch the price of a crystal goblet among us. The possessor of such a prize as a Bass’ ale bottle will exhibit it to his neighbor as a rare curio from the Western barbarians, just as an American virtuoso shows off his last new Satsuma vase or box of Soochow lacquer. When English ship captains, visiting the coast, gave the Coreans a bottle of wine, the bottle, after being emptied, was always carefully returned with extreme politeness as an article of great value. The first Corean visitor to the American expedition of 1871, went into ecstacies, and his face budded into smiles hitherto thought impossible to the grim Corean visage, because the cook gave him an arm-load of empty ale-bottles. The height of domestic felicity is reached when a Corean householder can get a morsel of glass to fasten into his window or sliding-door, and thus gaze on the outer world through this “loophole of retreat.” This not only saves him from the disagreeable necessity of punching a finger-hole through the paper to satisfy his curiosity, but gives him the advantage of not being seen, and of keeping out the draft. When a whole pane has been secured, it is hard to state whether happiness or pride reigns uppermost in the owner’s bosom. [266]

Candlesticks are either tall and upright, resting on the floor in the Japanese style, or dish-lamps of common oil are used.

Flint and steel are used to ignite matches made of chips of wood dipped in sulphur, by which a “fire-flower” is made to blossom, or in more prosaic English, a flame is kindled. Phosphorus matches, imported from Japan, are called by a word signifying “fire-sprite,” “will-of-the-wisp,” or ignis-fatuus.

Usually in a gentleman’s house there is an ante-room or vestibule, in which neighbors and visitors sit and talk, smoke or drink. In this place much freedom is allowed and formalities are laid aside. Here are the facilities and the atmosphere which in Western lands are found in clubs, coffee- and ale-houses, or obtained from newspapers. One such, of which the picture is before us, has in it seats, and looks out on a garden or courtyard. On a ledge or window-seat are vases of blossoms and cut flowers; a smaller vase holds fans, and another is presumably full of tobacco or some other luxury. Short eave-curtains and longer drapery at the side, give an air of inviting comfort to these free and easy quarters, where news and gossip are exchanged. These oi-tiang, or outer apartments, are for strangers and men only, and women are never expected or allowed to be present.

The Ching-ja is a small house or room on the bank of a river, or overlooking some bit of natural scenery, to which picnic parties resort, the Coreans most heartily enjoying out-door festivity, in places which sky, water, and foliage make beautiful to the eye.

There are often inscribed on the portals, in large Chinese characters, moral mottoes or poetical sentiments, such as “Enter happiness, like breezes bring the spring, and depart evil spirit as snow melts in water.” Before a new house is finished, a sheet of pure white paper, in which are enclosed some nip, or “cash,” with grains of rice which have been steeped in wine, is nailed or fastened on the wall, over the door, and becomes the good spirit or genius of the house, sacrifices being duly offered to it. In more senses than one, the spirit that presides over too many Corean households is the alcohol spirit.

The Corean liquor, by preference, is brewed or distilled from rice, millet, or barley. These alcoholic drinks are of various strength, color, and smell, ranging from beer to brandy. In general their beverages are sufficiently smoky, oily, and alcoholic to Western tastes, as the fusel-oil usually remains even in the best products of their stills. No trait of the Coreans has more impressed [267]their numerous visitors, from Hamel to the Americans, than their love of all kinds of strong drink, from ale to whiskey. The common verdict is, “They are greatly addicted to the worship of Bacchus.” The Corean vocabulary bears ample witness to the thorough acquaintance of the people with the liquor made from grain by their rude processes. The inhabitants of the peninsula were hard drinkers even in the days of Fuyu and Kokorai. No sooner were the ports of modern Chō-sen open to commerce than the Chinese established liquor-stores, while European wines, brandies, whiskeys, and gins have entered to vary the Corean’s liquid diet and increase the national drunkenness.

Strange as it may seem, the peasant, though living between the two great tea-producing countries of the world—Japan and China—and in the latitude of tea-plantations, scarcely knows the taste of tea, and the fragrant herb is as little used as is coffee in Japan. The most common drink, after what the clouds directly furnish, is the water in which rice has been boiled. Infusions of dried ginseng, orange-peel, or ginger serve for festal purposes, and honey when these fail; but the word “tea,” or cha, serves the Corean, as it does the typical Irishman, for a variety of infusions and decoctions. With elastic charity the word covers a multitude of sins, chiefly of omission; all that custom or euphony requires is to prefix the name of the substance used to “cha” and the drink is tea—of some kind.

The staple diet has in it much more of meat and fat than that of the Japanese. The latter acknowledge that the average Corean can eat twice as much as himself. Beef, pork, fowls, venison, fish, and game are consumed without much waste in rejected material. Nearly everything edible about an animal is a tidbit, and a curious piece of cookery, symbolical of a generous feast, is often found at the board of a liberal host. This tang-talk (which often becomes the “town-talk”) is a chicken baked and served with its feathers, head, claws, and inwards intact. “To treat to an entire fowl” is said of a liberal host, and is equivalent to “killing the fatted calf.”

Fish are often eaten raw from tail to head, especially if small, with only a little seasoning. Ho-hoi, or fish-bone salad, is a delicacy. Dog-flesh is on sale among the common butchers’ meats, and the Coreans enjoy it as our Indians do. In the first month of the year, however, owing to religious scruples, no dog-meat is eaten, or dishes of canine origin permitted. [268]

The state dinner, given to the Japanese after the treaty, consisted of this bill of fare: two-inch squares of pastry, made of flour, sugar, and oil; heaps of boiled eggs; pudding made of flour, sesame, and honey; dried persimmons; “pine-seeds,” honey-like food covered with roasted rice colored red and white; macaroni soup with fowl; boiled legs of pork, and wine, rice or millet spirit with everything. It is customary to decorate the tables on grand occasions with artificial flowers, and often the first course is intended more for show than for actual eating. For instance, when the Japanese party, feasted at Seoul in 1646, first sat down to the table, one of them began to help himself to fish, of which he was very fond. The dish seemed to contain a genuine cooked carp basted with sauce, but, to the embarrassment of the hungry guest, the fish would not move. He was relieved by the servant, who told him that it was put on the table only for show. The courses brought on later contained more substantial nourishment, such as fish, flesh, fowl, vegetables, soups, cakes, puddings and tea. Judging from certain words in the language, these show-dishes form a regular feature at the opening of banquets. The women cook rice beautifully, making it thoroughly soft by steaming, while yet retaining the perfect shape of each grain by itself. Other well-known dishes are barley, millet, beans, taro (potato cooked in a variety of ways), lily-bulbs, sea-weeds, acorns, dai-kon (radishes), turnips, and potatoes. Macaroni and vermicelli are used for soups and refreshing lunches. Apples, pears, plums, grapes, persimmons, and various kinds of berries help to furnish the table, though the flavor of these is inferior to the same fruits grown in our gardens.

All kinds of condiments, mustard, vinegar, pepper, and a variety of home-made sauces, are much relished. Itinerant food-sellers are not so common as in China, but butcher-shops and vermicelli stands are numerous. Two solid meals, with a light breakfast, is the rule. Opan, or midday rice, is the dinner. Tai-sik is a regular meal. The appearance of the evening star is the signal for a hearty supper, and the planet a synonym for the last meal of the day. At wakes or funeral feasts, and on festal days, the amount of victuals consumed is enormous, while a very palatable way of remembering the dead is by the yum-pok, or drinking of sacrificial wine. The Coreans understand the preservative virtues of ice, and in winter large quantities of this substance are cut and stored away for use in the summer, in keeping fresh meat and fish. Their ice-houses are made by excavating the ground [269]and covering over the store with earth and sod, from which in hot weather they use as may be necessary. These ice stores are often under the direction of the government, especially when large quantities of fish are being preserved for rations of the army in time of war. Those who oversee the work are called “Officers of the Refrigerator.”

One striking fault of the Coreans at the table is their voracity, and to this trait of their character Japanese, French, Dutch, and Chinese bear witness. It might be supposed that a Frenchman, who eats lightly, might make a criticism where an Englishman would be silent; but not so. All reports concerning them seem to agree. In this respect there is not the least difference between the rich and poor, noble or plebeian. To eat much is an honor, and the merit of a feast consists not in the quality but in the quantity of the food served. Little talking is done while eating, for each sentence might lose a mouthful. Hence, since a capacious stomach is a high accomplishment, it is the aim from infancy to develop a belly having all possible elasticity. Often the mothers take their babies upon their knees, and after stuffing them with rice, like a wad in a gun, will tap them from time to time with the paddle of a ladle on the stomach, to see that it is fully spread out or rammed home, and only cease gorging when it is physically impossible for the child to swell up more. A Corean is always ready to eat; he attacks whatever he meets with, and rarely says, “Enough.” Even between meals, he will help himself to any edible that is offered. The ordinary portion of a laborer is about a quart of rice, which when cooked makes a good bulk. This, however, is no serious hindrance to his devouring double or treble the quantity when he can get it. Eating matches are common. When an ox is slaughtered, and the beef is served up, a heaping bowl of the steaming mess does not alarm any guest. Dog-meat is a common article of food, and the canine sirloins served up in great trenchers are laid before the guests, each one having his own small table to himself. When fruits, such as peaches or small melons, are served, they are devoured without peeling. Twenty or thirty peaches is considered an ordinary allowance, which rapidly disappears. Such a prodigality in victuals is, however, not common, and for one feast there are many fastings. Beef is not an article of daily food with the peasantry. Its use is regulated by law, the butcher being a sort of government official; and only under extraordinary circumstances, [270]as when a grand festival is to be held, does the king allow an ox to be killed in each village. The Coreans are neither fastidious in their eating nor painstaking in their cooking. Nothing goes to waste. All is grist that comes to the mill in their mouths.

They equal Japanese in devouring raw fish, and uncooked food of all kinds is swallowed without a wry face. Even the intestines pass among them for delicate viands. Among the poorer classes, a cooked fish is rarely seen on the table; for no sooner is it caught than it is immediately opened and devoured. The raw viands are usually eaten with a strong seasoning of pepper or mustard, but they are often swallowed without condiment of any sort. Often in passing along the banks of a river, one may see men fishing with rod and line. Of these some are nobles who are not able, or who never wish to work for a living, yet they will fish for food and sport. Instead of a bag or basket to contain the game, or a needle to string it upon, each fisher has at his side a jar of diluted pepper, or a kind of soy. No sooner is a fish hooked, than he is drawn out, seized between the two fingers, dipped into the sauce, and eaten without ceremony. Bones do not scare them. These they eat, as they do the small bones of fowls.

Nationally, and individually, the Coreans are very deficient in conveniences for the toilet. Bath-tubs are rare, and except in the warmer days of summer, when the river and sea serve for immersion, the natives are not usually found under water. The Japanese in the treaty expedition in 1876 had to send bath-tubs on shore from their ships. Morning ablutions are made in a copper basin. The sponges which grow on the west coast seem to find no market at home. This neglect of more intimate acquaintance with water often makes the lowest classes “look like mulattos,” as Hamel said. Gutzlaff, Adams, and others, especially the Japanese, have noted this personal defect, and have suggested the need of soap and hot water. It may be that the contrast between costume and cuticle tempts to exaggeration. People who dress in white clothing have special need of personal cleanliness. Perhaps soap factories will come in the future.

The men are very proud of their beards, and the elders very particular in keeping them white and clean. The lords of creation honor their beard as the distinctive glory and mark of their sex. A man is in misery if he has only just enough beard to distinguish him from a woman. A full crop of hair on cheek and chin insures to its possessor unlimited admiration, while in Corean [271]billingsgate there are numerous terms of opprobrium for a short beard. Europeans are contemptuously termed “short-hairs”—with no suspicion of the use of the word in New York local politics. Old gentlemen keep a little bag in which they assiduously collect the combings of their hair, the strokings of their beard and parings of their nails, in order that all that belongs to them may be duly placed in their coffin at death.

The human hair crop is an important item in trade with China, to which country it is imported and sold to piece out the hair-tails which the Chinese, in obedience to their Manchiu conquerors, persist in wearing. Some of this hair comes from poor women, but the staple product is from the heads of boys who wear their hair parted in the middle, and plaited in a long braid, which hangs down their backs. At marriage, they cut this off, and bind what remains in a tight, round knot on the top of the scalp, using pins or not as they please.

The court pages and pretty boys who attend the magnates, usually rosy-cheeked, well fed, and effeminate looking youths, do not give any certain indication of their sex, and foreigners are often puzzled to know whether they are male or female. Their beardless faces and long hair are set down as belonging to women. Most navigators have made this mistake in gender, and when the first embassy from Seoul landed in Yokohama, the controversy, and perhaps the betting, as to the sex of these nondescripts was very lively. Captain Broughton declared that the whole duty of these pages seemed to be to smooth out the silk dresses of the grandees. Officials and nobles cover their top-knots with neat black nets of horse-hair or glazed thread. Often country and town people wear a fillet or white band of bark or leaves across the forehead to keep the loose hair in order, as the ancient Japanese used to do. Women coil their glossy black tresses into massive knots, and fasten them with pins or golden, silver, and brass rings. The heads of the pins are generally shaped like a dragon. They oil their hair, using a sort of vegetable pomatum. Among the court ladies and female musicians the styles of coiffure are various; some being very pretty, with loops, bands, waves, and “bangs,” as the illustration on page 161 shows.

Corea is decidedly the land of big hats. From their amplitude these head-coverings might well be called “roofs,” or, at least, “umbrellas.” Their diameter is so great that the human head encased in one of them seems but as a hub in a cart-wheel. They [272]would probably serve admirably as parachutes in leaping from a high place. Under his wide-spreading official hat a magistrate can shelter his wife and family. It serves as a numeral, since a company is counted by hats, instead of heads or noses. How the Corean dignitary can weather a gale remains a mystery, and, perhaps, the feat is impossible and rarely attempted. A slim man is evidently at a disadvantage in a “Japanese wind” or typhoon. The personal avoirdupois, which is so much admired in the peninsula, becomes very useful as ballast to the head-sail. Corean magnates, cast away at sea, would not lack material for ship’s canvas. In shape, the gentleman’s hat resembles a flower-pot set on a round table, or a tumbler on a Chinese gong. Two feet is a common diameter, thus making a periphery of six feet. The top or cone, which rises nine inches higher, is only three inches wide. This chimney-like superstructure serves as ornament and ventilator. Its purpose is not to encase the head, for underneath the brim is a tight-fitting skull-cap, which rests on the head and is held on by padded ties under the ears. The average rim for ordinary people, however, is about six inches in radius. The huge umbrella-hat of bleached bamboo is worn by gentlemen in mourning. After death it is solemnly placed on the bier, and forms a conspicuous object at the funeral. The native name for hat is kat or kat-si.

The usual material is bamboo, split to the fineness of a thread, and woven so as to resemble horse-hair. The fabric is then varnished or lacquered, and becomes perfectly weather-proof, resisting sun and rain, but not wind. The prevalence of cotton clothing, easily soaked and rendered uncomfortable, requires the ample protection for the back and shoulders, which these umbrella-like hats furnish. In heavy rain, the kat-no is worn, that is, a cone of oiled paper, fixed on the hat in the shape of a funnel. Indeed, the umbrella in Corea is rather for a symbol of state and dignity than for vulgar use, and is often adorned with knobs and strips. Quelpart Island is the home of the hatters, whose fashionable wares supply the dandies and dignitaries of the capital and of the peninsula. The highest officers of the government have the cone truncated or rounded at the vertex, and surmounted by a little figure of a crane in polished silver, very handsome and durable. This long-legged bird is a symbol of civil office. “To confer the hat,” means as much to an officer high in favor at the court of Seoul as to a cardinal in the Vatican, only the color is black, not [273]red. It is Corean etiquette to keep the hat on, and in this respect, as well as in their broad brims, the hermits resemble the Quakers. Marriage and mourning are denoted also by the hat.

A variety of materials is employed by other classes. Soldiers wear large black or brown felt hats, resembling Mexican sombreros, which are adorned with red horse-hair or a peacock’s feather, swung on a swivel button.

Suspended from the sides, over the ears and around the neck, are strings of round balls of blue porcelain, cornelian, amber, or what resembles kauri gum. Sometimes these ornaments are tubular, reminding one of the millinery of a cardinal’s hat.

For the common people, plaited straw or rushes of varied shapes serve for summer, while in winter shaggy caps of lynx, wolf, bear, or deer-skin are common, made into Havelock, Astrachan, Japanese, and other shapes, some resembling wash-bowls, some being fluted or fan-like, winged, sock-shaped, or made like a nightcap. Variety seems to be the fashion.

The head-dress of the court nobles differs from that of the vulgar as much as the Pope’s tiara differs from a cardinal’s rubrum. It is a crown or helmet, which, eschewing brim, rises in altitude to the proportions of a mitre. Without earstrings or necklaces of beads, it is yet highly ornamental. One of these consists of a cap, with a sort of gable at the top. Another has six lofty curving folds or volutes set in it. On another are designs from the pa-kwa, or sixty-four mystic diagrams, which are supposed to be sacred symbols of the Confucian philosophy, and of which fortune-tellers make great use.

The wardrobe of the gentry consists of the ceremonial and the house dress. The former, as a rule, is of fine silk, and the latter of coarser silk or cotton. These “gorgeous Corean dresses” are of pink, blue, and other rich colors. The official robe is a long garment like a wrapper, with loose, baggy sleeves. This is embroidered with the stork or phœnix for civil, and with the kirin, lion, or tiger for military officers. Buttons are unknown and form no part of a Corean’s attire, male or female, thus greatly reducing the labor of the wives and mothers who ply the needle, which in Corea has an “ear” instead of an “eye.” Strings and girdles, and the shifting of the main weight of the clothing to the shoulders, take the place of these convenient, but fugitive, adjuncts to the Western costume. There are few tailors’ shops, the women of each household making the family outfit. [274]

Soldiers in full dress wear a sleeveless, open surcoat for display. The under dress of both sexes is a short jacket with tight sleeves, which for men reaches to the thighs, and for women only to the waist, and a pair of drawers reaching from waist to ankle, a little loose all the way down for the men, and tied at the ankles, but for the women made tight and not tied. The females wear a petticoat over this garment, so that the Coreans say they dress like Western women, and foreign-made hosiery and under-garments are in demand. Although they have a variety of articles of apparel easily distinguishable to the native eye, yet their general style of costume is that of the wrapper, stiff, wide, and inflated with abundant starch in summer, but clinging and baggy in winter. The rule is tightness and economy for the working, amplitude and richness of material for the affluent classes. The women having no pockets in their dresses, wear a little bag suspended from their girdle. This is worn on the right side, attached by cords. These contain their bits of jewelry, scissors, knife, a tiger’s claw for luck, perfume-bottle or sachet, a tiny chess-board in gold or silver, etc. Besides the rings on their fingers the ladies wear hair-pins of gold ornamented with bulbs or figures of birds. Many of them dust pun, or white powder, on their faces, and employ various other cosmetics, which are kept in their kiong-tai, or mirror toilet-stands; in which also may be their so-hak, or book containing rules of politeness.

The general type of costume is that of China under the Ming dynasty. To a Chinaman a Corean looks antiquated, a curiosity in old clothes; a Japanese at a little distance, in the twilight, is reminded of ghosts, or the snowy heron of the rice-fields, while to the American the Corean swell seems compounded chiefly of bed-clothes, and in his most elaborate costume to be still in his under-garments.

Plenty of starch in summer, and no stint of cotton in winter, are the needs of the Corean. His white dress makes his complexion look darker than it really is. The monotonous dazzle of bleached garments is relieved by the violet robes of the magistrate, the dark blue for the soldiers, and lighter shades of that color in the garb of the middle class; the blue strip which edges the coat of the literary graduates, and the pink and azure clothes of the children. Less agreeable is the nearness which dispels illusion. The costume, which seemed snowy at a distance, is seen to be dingy and dirty, owing to an entire ignorance of soap. [275]

The Corean dress, though simpler than the Chinese, is not entirely devoid of ornament. The sashes are often of handsome blue silk or brocaded stuff. The official girdles, or flat belts a few inches wide, have clasps of gold, silver, or rhinoceros horn, and are decorated with polished ornaments of gold or silver. For magistrates of the three higher ranks these belts are set with blue stones; for those of the fourth and fifth grade with white stones, and for those below the fifth with a substance resembling horn. Common girdles are of cotton, hemp cloth, or rope.

Fans are also a mark of rank, being made of various materials, especially silk or cloth, stretched on a frame. The fan is an instrument of etiquette. To hide the face with one is an act of politeness. The man in mourning must have no other kind than that in which the pin or rivet is of cow’s horn. Oiled paper fans serve a variety of purposes. In another kind, the ribs of the frame are bent back double. The finer sort for the nobility are gorgeously inlaid with pearl or nacre.

A kind of flat wand or tablet, seen in the hands of nobles, ostensibly to set down orders of the sovereign, is made of ivory for officers above, and of wood for those below the fourth grade. [276]

Another badge of office is the little wand, half way between a toy whip and a Mercury’s caduceus, of black lacquered wood, with cords of green silk. This is carried by civil officers, and may be the original of the Japanese baton of command, made of lacquered wood with pendant strips of paper.

Canes are carried by men of the literary or official class when in mourning. These tall staves, which, from the decks of European vessels sailing along the coast, have often looked like spears, are the sang-chang, or smooth bamboo staves, expressive of ceremonial grief, and nothing more.

As the Coreans have no pockets, they make bags, girdles, and their sleeves serve instead. The women wear a sort of reticule hung at the belt, and the men a smoking outfit, consisting of an oval bag to hold his flint and steel, some fine-cut tobacco, and a long, narrow case for his pipe.

Foot-gear is either of native or of Chinese make. The laborer contents himself with sandals woven from rice-straw, which usually last but a few days. A better sort is of hempen twine or rope, with many strands woven over the top of the foot. A man in mourning can wear but four cords on the upper part. Socks are too expensive for the poor, except in the winter. Shoes made of cotton are often seen in the cities, having hempen or twine soles. The low shoes of cloth, or velvet, and cowhide, upturned at the toe, worn by officials, are imported from China. Small feet do not seem to be considered a beauty, and the foot-binding of the Chinese is unknown in Chō-sen, as in Japan. [277]