amounts of cordwood split from timber a foot through were being brought to the stations on the backs of cattle. In some places there was evident and occasionally very serious soil erosion, as may be seen in Fig. 214, one such region being passed just before reaching Kinusan, but generally the hills are well rounded and covered with a low growth of shrubs and herbaceous plants.
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Fig. 214.—Looking across fields of wheat at an eroding hillside over which forest growth is being allowed to spread.
Southernmost Korea has the latitude of the northern
boundary of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and
Mississippi, while the northeast corner attains that of Madison,
Wisconsin, and the northern boundary of Nebraska, the
country thus spanning some nine degrees and six hundred
miles of latitude. It has an area of some 82,000 square
miles, about equaling the state of Minnesota, but much of
its surface is occupied by steep hill and mountain land.
The rainy season had not yet set in, June 23rd. Wheat
and the small grains were practically all harvested southward
of Seoul and the people were everywhere busy with
their flails threshing in the open, about the dwellings or in
the fields, four flails often beating together on the same
lot of grain. As we journeyed southward the valleys and
the fields became wider and more extensive, and the crops,
as well as the cultural methods, were clearly much better.
