manent depth is greater than a man's height are crossed by ferry. These ferries are supposed to be government affairs, and are supported out of the finances of the district in which they are situated, but the passenger is always supposed to pay a small sum as a gratuity. I imagine that the ferryman has to depend largely upon this source of income. The ferryboats are wide, shallow affairs, and when they are loaded down with a miscellaneous crowd of loaded bullocks and pack-ponies, gentlemen's " chairs," coolies' jiggys and a score or more of men, women and children, it generally seems as if it was only by a special dispensation of Providence that the opposite bank could ever be reached. Indeed, an annual sacrifice is made to the spirits of those who have been drowned in this and in other ways.
The little temporary bridges built on small sticks, covered with brushwood and earth on top of all, are one of the curiosities of Korea. They are barely wide enough for a single animal or person to pass, and they usually have one or more holes through which the unwary may put his foot. The Korean word for bridge is the same as that for leg, and the reason for this is plain. The bridge is simply a row of artificial legs let down into the sand. Time was when the Koreans were capable of better things, for during the Japanese invasion of 1592, when the Chinese army came to help the Koreans and arrived at the bank of the Imjin River, the Chinese general refused to take his men across unless the Koreans would build a substantial bridge. The distance was fully one hundred yards, but the Koreans, in their thirst for revenge upon the Japanese, were equal to any task. On one side was a heavily wooded bluff and on the other a sandy shore. On the low bank they sunk gre"at posts, and between these and the trees on the opposite side they carried eight great hawsers of the tough chik vine, some eight inches in diameter. These dragged in the water in mid-stream; but, going out in boats, they put stout bars of oak between the hawsers and twisted them until they were brought well above
