The geographical features of the island include four clearly-defined ranges of mountains, with peaks attaining to an altitude of some two thousand feet. Broad and fertile valleys, running from east to west, separate these ranges, the agricultural industry of the population being conducted in their open spaces. The villages and farmsteads, in which the farming population dwell, are folded away in little hollows along the sides of the valleys, securing shelter and protection from the severity of the winter. Many hundred acres of the flats, which form the approaches to these valleys from the coast, have been reclaimed from the sea during the last two centuries, the erection of sea dykes of considerable length and immense strength having proceeded apace. But for these heavy earthworks, what is now a flourishing agricultural area would be nothing but a sea of mud washed by every spring tide. The continuous encroachment of the sea threatened at one time the extinction of all the low-lying level land.
Kang-wha, with its curious monasteries and high protecting battlements, now reduced to picturesque decay, played a prominent part in the early history of Korea. It has repelled invasion, and afforded sanctuary to the Royal Family and the Government in days of trouble; the boldness of its position has made it the first outpost to be attacked and the most important to be defended. Twice in the thirteenth century the capital was removed to Kang-wha under stress of foreign invasion. With the exception of the terrible Japanese invasion under Hideyoshi in 1592, and the Chino-Japanese War in 1894-95, Kang-wha has felt the full force of nearly every foreign expedition which has disturbed the peace of the country during the past eight centuries, notably those of the Mongols in the thirteenth, of
