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BEYOND THE CAPITAL shades of these cool mountains and sunlit valleys the people live in unrebuked simplicity. They offered the loan of charcoal stoves or retailed eggs, chickens and rice to my servants. At the moment of my bath, youths and youngsters gambolled with me in the stream. It is said that the Koreans are far from clean, a statement they belied upon many occasions by the freedom and enjoyment with which they indulged in these dips. Foreigners had not penetrated along the route which my friend and I were following to the German mines, and even the ubiquitous evangelist had not penetrated to these peasant homes. The mountains and rivers had no names; the settlements were small; inns did not exist. Everywhere was contentment, peace, and infinite repose. Nature stood revealed to us in primæval grandeur, and it was impossible not to enjoy the calm of the valleys, the rugged beauty of the mountain crests, the picturesque wildness of the scenery.