Page:Korea (1904).djvu/228

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176
KOREA

at between three and five millions. Mountains predominate in these districts. A bewildering tangle of wooded hills and bleak peaks meets the eye, jumbling and jostling one another in every direction until nothing is seen but broken mountains and ridges cleft into a thousand little valleys. More especially is this the case in Ham-kyöng and Kang-won; in Pyöng-an the valleys broaden out and the hills become lower and less frequent, giving place to the Ta-dong River, and many wide spaces for agricultural purposes. Among these broken ranges in the neighbourhood of Won-san, and towards the interior, there is much sport. Sable, ermine, and otter are trapped in Northern Ham-kyöng; tigers, leopards, bears, wolves and foxes are rare in fact, plentiful in fiction. Wild boar, deer and hares are not uncommon; pheasants are less numerous than formerly. Snipe appear in August, duck in September, geese and wild fowl in the winter on the marshes and lagoons. There is much game upon the land, and there is much sport in the sea. Whales, shark, seal, salmon, and innumerable small species wait to be caught, the products of sea and land combining to make the place a sportsman's paradise.

The approach to the treaty port of Fusan is through a bay strewn with green islands and encompassed by high cliffs. A narrow path, skirting the shore and running over the cliffs, leads presently to Old Fusan, a walled city of great antiquity, situated at the end of a stretch of ten miles of sea, which forms one of the arms of the bay. New Fusan is like every other Korean treaty port. The smells of the Japanese settlement were worse, however, very much worse, as I well remember, than any which rose from the sewers and slimy alleys of the old town. Old Fusan stands alone, at the head of the bay, looking down from its ruined and crumbling