from being completely devoured by microbes is the fact that once a year these ditches and canals are all washed out by the floods of water during the two months of the rainy season. Then there is another saving feature in the fact that for three months in the year they are so completely frozen up that even an Eastern microbe cannot wriggle.
Among all the thousands of houses in this great city, there are only a few that are more than one story high, and these have all been built since the coming of the Western foreigner. So this in itself makes Seoul different from all the other cities that I have seen or read of. This is a city of one-story houses covered with tile and straw. A view from the top of one of the near-by mountains gives the appearance of a city paved with tile and decorated with brown straw thatch.
There are but few temples in the city; in fact, there is but one that is worthy the name. This is the Temple of Heaven, where his Majesty is supposed to worship. The absence of temples has led some travelers to conclude that Seoul is a city without religion, which is far from the fact in the case, since these houses in Seoul, like all other houses in the country, have their spirits, of which we shall write in another chapter.
Strictly speaking, there are few business houses in Seoul — that is, houses which are used wholly for business. The family usually occupies a part of the house that is used for a shop or store, as the case may be. The ordinary shop is a room about eight feet square in the front of the house; the front is so con-
