Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1883-06-28
Corea and the coreans.

Corea and the coreans.
There is much natural beauty in the
country, the beauty of mountain,
forest and prairie. Of profuse vegeta-
ton, and plentiful rivers and cataracts.
And the people are not Indifferent to
these beauties; they are seeing
race, and proud (among themselves)
of their marine and mountain views.
The country is fertile, but the climate
has great extremes of heat and cold.
The Indian story of "the tiger that
owns my village" would be thoroughly
appreciated in Corea, where very
large and fierce species of that terrible
animal abounds, and the idea Of it
pervades all works of art. To Japan
ese children, Chosen is known as 'the
land of the tiger" Leopards, bears
and wolves are also very numerous,
the wild deer and the wild hog
abound, monkeys are found in the
southern provinces, and alligators and
salamanders in the rivers. The peo-
pie are large eaters, especially of meat;
small oxen in great numbers supply
them in the south, and dogs are eaten
commonly. Tea and rice are rare lux
uries, and fish is chiefly devoured raw.
Altogether, the ''diet" chapter is an
uncomfortable one. Sheep are i'm
ported from China for sacrifcial pur-
poses only, and goats are rare. The
poorer classes are meagerly fed; they
live, like the Japanese. on millet and
beans. All classes use tobacco very
much. We may take it that the man
ners which Mr.. Grifis describes as ex-
isting now are just the same as they
have been for ages domestic slavery
in its mildest form, for instance, the
position of women, the fraternal prin-
ciples on which trades and industries
are conducted, and the curious cere-
monies of marriage, burial and mourn
ing.
Women are not so i'll off in Cerea as
in many other less secluded heather
countries. They have no rights, and
are disposed of like the other animals ;
but they are not il-treated by their
owners, and though their personal in
significance actually extends to their
having no names, they receive titles
of honor in public, their apartments
are secure from intrusion, they cannot
be punished for any crime, the males
of the family being responsible for
them, and they are free (and safe) to
60 about at all hours. Widows of po-
sition are not supposedto marry again.
and are expected to mourn all their
lives, but man whose wife dies wears
half mourning for q very short time.
1t is a breach of good manners to- be
yehemently sorry for ones wife, and
the sex that makes every law finds that
one easy to keep.
A Corean king is rather absurd
parsonage; nobody must touch him
unbidden, and any one who accidentally
does so has henceforth to wear a red
cord round the neck. Metal, also,
must never approach the royal person.
The king has despotic power, but it is
tempered by many kindly customs; he
hears the complaints of his subjects,
and is in constant communication with
the populaee, by means of commits
sioners. The royal outings are tre-
mendous affairs, with caparisoned
horses, dragon flags, and the sacred
fan and umbrella. The mobiles are
bad and cruel class, according to all
accounts of them; the officials and
magistrates are " literary" Literature
has from time immemorial been held
in honor in Corea, from whence the
japanese adopted printing in the
twelfth century, when work of the
Buddhist canon was printed from
wooden blocks. "a Corean book is
known which dates automatically from
the period 1317-1334, over century
before the earliest printed book known
in Europe" The Coreans are Bud
dhists, but Shamanism has never lost
its hold upon them, and the old gods
are reverenced still, just as the old
Myths remain in modern Greece. The
air is not empty for Corean, and
every month has its three unlucky
days, the 9Th, the 18th and the 25th.
The worship Of ancestors and the
Chinese system of ethics, or Confucian-
ism, are their ruling principles, and
the fulfllment of the parental and filial
relations in an admirable manner is
the distinguishing virtue Of the hermit
race.-London Spectator.
Nearly 900 lives were saved last year
on the British coasts by the aid Of the
Royal National Lifeboat institution,
which during its fifty-nine years work