Читать книгу Fifteen Years Among the Top-Knots; Or, Life in Korea - Lillias H. Underwood - Страница 10

Table of Contents

Leaving Kangai—We Choose a Short Cut—Much Goitre in the Mountains—A Deserted Village—The Jericho Road—We are Attacked by Robbers—A Struggle in the Inn Yard—Odds too great—Our Attendants are Seized and Carried Off—The Kind Inn-Keeper—Inopportune Patients—A Race for Life—A City of Refuge—A Beautiful Custom—Safe at Last—The Magistrate Turns Out to be an Old Friend—The Charge to the Hunters.

Our next stopping place of importance was the town of Kangai. This was a walled city of between ten and twenty thousand inhabitants in the northern part of the province of Pyeng An Do. Being in the center of a rather turbulent and independent community, at least at that time—and when were mountaineers not so?—and quite near the Chinese border, its governor was invested with almost provincial authority, had a large number of soldiers always under arms, and surrounded himself with the greatest possible show of power and state, having a numerous and obsequious body-guard, a gun fired whenever he left his office, and a great retinue of menials and officials who constantly attended him. He told us that all this was necessary to overawe the people and establish his prestige and dignity. He was a relative of the queen, and I had met him at the palace.

As we approached the city and about three miles outside of it, we saw in the distance a little company of soldiers with flying banners and sounding trumpets, awaiting us apparently at the foot of a hill. What this might portend we were at a loss to guess. It might mean fetters and warder for intrusive foreigners, it might mean an order to return, it might mean our immediate extinction, but so kind had been our reception everywhere, barring sightseers, that we did not entertain any serious misgivings, although greatly puzzled as to what the demonstration could possibly signify. However, we marched right up, as if this martial array concerned us not in the least. As soon as we came within saluting distance the leader of the little company made us the most profound obeisance and announced that he had been sent to escort us to the city. So we proceeded with this rather cumbersome addition to our modest suite, and not only this, for small boys are the same all the world over, and a motley throng of them, attracted both by the soldiers and the circus (or, shall we say, the menagerie?), closed in around us. A mile farther on a second attachment of military, with its inevitable corps of small boys, was awaiting us, and on we went, the hubbub ever increasing, drums beating, trumpets sounding, flags flying, wooden shoes clattering over the stones, louder, it seemed to me, than all the rest, as I cowered in the shelter of my closely curtained chair.

PRINCE YU CHAI SOON, COUSIN OF KING.

HIGH KOREAN OFFICIAL, KIM YAN SIK. PAGE 23

Momentarily the formidable dimensions of the crowd increased, while other bands of soldiers joined us at intervals, for which I was devoutly thankful, for while the crowd seemed good-natured and simply wildly curious, at the same time we were strangers, to whom Koreans had the reputation of being inimical. With so large a crowd a small matter may kindle a blaze of fury, and as we were rather inexperienced and ignorant of the character of the people, I felt that whatever the intentions of the magistrate might be, the hand of the responsible official would be gentle compared with the hands of the mob. And yet looking back on it all now, in the light of all that has since occurred, it was not altogether inappropriate but in a way fitting, that the first heralds of the gospel and the advent of Christianity to this province should be with banners, trumpets and great acclaim. The Kingdom had come, if only in its smallest beginnings, and had come to stay.

The wonder of it, which will grow, I think, more and more through the eternal ages, is that God should allow us, his poor creatures, to share with him in a work far greater than the creation of a universe, even the founding of an eternal and limitless kingdom of holiness, glory and peace.

But to return to our noisy procession. Within the city the noise and excitement (“yahdan” the Koreans would say, and nothing expresses it so well) were far greater than ever. Dancing girls and hoodlums of every description swelled the crowd, laughing, shouting, pushing, jostling. High points of vantage were occupied to the last inch with small boydom, booths or screened seats had been rented for the use of the ladies, and the streets were hardly passable. I shivered. I felt like a mouse in the power of a playful tiger. It is not a pleasant thing to feel one’s self the object of desire—even if merely in a sightseeing way—of thousands of strange people. Many in that crowd had come more than ten miles to behold us. My husband to protect me from the unpleasantness, to say the least, of falling into the hands of so large and eager a mob, hastened to the gates of the magistracy, quickly dismounted and bade the guards be ready to close them the instant my chair had entered. This was promptly done, the gates well bolted and guarded, and proud of our victory over the small boys, we hastily retired to our rooms. But hark! what noise was that, like thundering of a waterfall, or of a river dashing away its barriers? Alack! it was the boys. They had scaled the wall on each other’s shoulders, and were literally pouring over it into the compound.

I looked around the little room for some means of escape, like a hunted animal. Its windows and doors were double, the inner one sliding into the wall, but both were composed simply of a light frame of slender sticks covered with stout paper, and already the dancing girls and boys were tearing away the outer coat preparatory to forcing an entrance. Suddenly I espied a small door, which I found opened into a long dark closet, full of the dust and dirt of unclean centuries. Hither I fled, cowering in its farthest recesses. Those who looked in the windows, and saw nothing of the strange animal genus Americanum, concluded she must be in some other place, and so a short respite was granted, which Mr. Underwood and the deputy magistrate made good use of in guarding our house doors. The deputy himself was obliged to take his station there, and threatening with awful penalties any soldier who should permit the “chabin duli” (roughs and crowd) to enter uninvited. Henceforth during my stay in that town I was comparatively untroubled.

A very epidemic of diseases, however, seemed to have smitten the place. Every one needed the doctor, and old, almost forgotten complaints were resurrected and rubbed up, or if none existed new ones were invented to furnish an excuse for an introduction. People stood in long rows from morning till night to see this popular doctor, and had I been medicining for money, I might have charged almost any price and filled high our coffers; but I was only too glad to be able to tell them of the great Physician, whose unspeakable gift is without money or price.

The magistrate treated us very kindly, and one day made a dinner for Mr. Underwood at a little summer house outside the city. Here, after partaking of various Korean dainties, he asked him a great many questions about America and Americans. My husband had thus a fine opportunity to enlighten the man on our own mission and work. He of course listened politely, but the Korean noble is very difficult to reach. He is bound so rigidly by so many social, religious and political fetters, that he usually will not allow himself to consider for a moment the possibility of casting them off.

We were much disappointed at not finding here any of the inquirers of whom we had been told so much, and to examine and instruct whom Mr. Underwood had turned so far aside from the main road to his final destination, Weeju. We could only conclude that they had either been too shy to approach us in the public quarters in which we were located or that we had been entirely misinformed, and we were forced very reluctantly to accept the latter as a fact.

The magistrate sent a number of presents to us ere we left—a box of cigars, though we were not smokers, another of candied Chinese ginger, honey, flour, beef, vinegar and potatoes. These were articles which they found by diligent inquiry from our attendants that we were fond of. They scoured the country for potatoes, though except in the mountains, where rice will not grow, few Koreans cultivate or eat them.

On leaving Kangai we could either take a long road around the mountains, well known and much traveled, or a short cut through and over them, much less frequented, but which the magistrate assured us was now quite safe, as he had recently passed through there himself and believed that everything was now quiet and orderly. The locality had a bad reputation, being off the main lines of travel in the recesses of the mountains, where escaped criminals were wont to hide, and where a band of robbers were said to have made their lair. But time pressed, work was urgent, the magistrate’s statements were reassuring, and we decided to take the shorter road. We were provided with a police official and a soldier, who, our host told us, would be respected and feared, and our entire safety would thus be assured.