Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1889-01-25
Essex County Herald.
Y. B. BISHOP, Publisher.
ISSUED EVERY FRIDAY
A.
ISLAND POND, VT.
TERMS. S1.50 Per Year. In Advance.
THE C0REANS.
THEIR QUEER DRESS AND
QUAINT HABITS PORTRAYED.
A Land I'm State of Perpetual Siesta
Their Ponderous and Expan-
sive Hats-Secluded Females
Oddly Dressed Hair.

down into the racine ocean from Jne
northeast edge of China and the lower
eastern edge of Russian Siberia. Be-
tween it and China is the dirty, bolster
GUS Yellow Sea, which takes day and a
night by steamer to cross, and its lower
coast is about an equal distance from the
western edge of Japan. 1t has 1900
miles of sea coast and its western shores
are lined with bold rocky islands. 1t is
land of mountains. A great chain
winds through it from north to south
and, going by the land in a steamer, its
coasts look mountainous, bleak and bare.
Corea is the only land in the world
where the hackman does not flourish, and
there are no means of public conveyance
for hire. The nobl,s go about in chairs,
but each owns his own chair or rides his
own donkey, and the general means of
locomotion from one place to another is
MIR. Shank's mare.
The scenes upon the streets of Seoul,
the capital, are those of another world.
The whole town seems to have laid off
for rest, and its queer population takes
a perpetual siesta. What queer looking
animals those are which squat and smoke
in couples or in dozens on the side or at
the corners of the streets. They might
be Chinese and they might be Japanese,
but they are better looking than either.
What gorgeous dresses some of them
wear, and you look twice to see whether
the big sugar-loaf hats of horse hair
which are fastened to their heads are
natural part Of their person or an article
of dress.
How many of them dress in white
and their long full gowns belly out at
the front and each of their legs looks
like baby in swaddling clothes. They
wear padded white stockings and the
shoes CT the rich are gorgeous in their
embroidered decorations. There is one
of them walking. He swings his arms
as he goes, and his plpe with its long
stem and small silver bowl hangs almost
to his knees in his smoking. What a
maze of bright colors and how gorgeous
are the delicate sky blues, the bright
pinks and the crushed strawberries which
come forth from these mud walled
thatched huts. The contrast of colors is
striking and that of conditions is more
so. New shapes and colors strike your
ewes at every turn, and had Dean Swift
lived here he would have had no excuse
for Gulliver. The hats are as different
as the men and each hat has its mean
ing. Here comes man in long gown
of gray hemp and his head has cover
ing of fnely-woven straw as big as
sun umbrella which comes out and down
over the shoulders and makes him look
as though his hat was walking off with
him. You wonder what kind of an ami
NAL he is and you peek under as he
passes. He has a little strap of gray
linen stretched between two sticks
which he holds before his face and you
see only his eyes and his forehead. This
is a mourner. For three years after
mans father or mother dies he is com
PEELED to put on this garb. He
must not let his face be seen;
he dare not engage In festivities,
and he cannot marry. If, at the end of
this time or during it, another relative
dies, he Is forced to mourn thee years
longer, and in this way would-be Bene-
diets are kept for nine years out of the
married state. From the number of
these hats on the streets death seems as
common in Corea as elsewhere, and the
syckle of od Time cuts down the
his straight.eyed brother.
These mourners' hats are the same as
those of the bull drivers. They are
merely of finer material. The bulls and
men are the beasts of burden of Corea,
and coming up the wide street of the
capital you see many a bullock harnessed
to rude carts, the wheels of which are
fastened together with pins, and which
are almost as rude as those sawed out of
logs by our early pioneers. Corean hats
are by no means inexpensive. The stiff
sugar-loaf variety of black horse-hair
cost about R16 apiece when of the best
quality, and the Corean men spend more
time on the dress of their heads than
they do on any other part Of their bodies
It is said that from $500 to $500 are
sometimes invested in headgear, and
every Corean carries little oiled paper
conical cap which looks like an i'm
mense lamp shade closed at the top, and
which folds up like fan. When it
rains he carefully pulls this over his
horse hair hat and ties it under the
chin. have as yet seen no umbrellas
in Corea, and there were no waterproofs
in such shops as ] saw.
Corean hair is as queer as are Corean
hats, and there is here almost language
in hair dressing. Married men wear
their hair different from those unmarried,
and no matter what be his age a person
is not q man in Corea until he has a wife
Boys and bachelors rank on the same
footing. They part their hair in the
: middle, and it is braided in strand
which hangs down the back When the
boy is married he has the right to cut of
his hair, when it grows again he combs
it up into round hard knot on the
crown. This knot is as big around al
your wrist, and it stands straight up or
the crown of the head like O handle
which if the American indians coulC
hunt in Corea, would be bonanza il
scalpng
With their gowns and their long hail
thus parted in the middle the boys o.
Corea look like girls, and tho candy
sellers and venders, who carry thei
goods around in little boxes slung be
fore them by straps about their necks
are often taken by travellers as the fai
girls of the country.
In Corea, however, the high bred girl
are unseen. They are secluded at sevel
and after this are seen only by thei
brothers, their fathers and husbands. !
they come out at all in the streets the
come out at night and their quarters ar
in the back of the house and apart fror
the gaze of strange men. Only tn
common women, and not the ladies, ar
to be seen in the city and these are a
queer as the men They attempt to hid
their faces by throwing great cloak O
green silk over the heads and hodin
this at the neck with the hand so tina
eften only one eye can be seen peepin