Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1894-08-18

the land of Corea In the meantime the
danger Of the other powers being involved
in the war is very great. The Baltimore
and the Monocacy. our two gunboats, are at
Chemulpo. The French man-of-war Incon-
slant, the German gunboat Hits, the En-
glish warship Archer and the Russian man.
of-war koreatz are also in this same hdr-
Dor and the other ports of Corea contain
warships. The British very much afraid
of the Russians. There Is said to be a man.
of-war at Port Hamilton. which Is. you
know. some distance below Vladvostock
IN Siberia. 1t is put there to watch the Rus
sian movements. The Russians are said to
sympsthize with the Japanese, while Eng
land, who sells tens upon tens of millions
OF dollars worth of goods every year to
China, favors her. If the tranS-Siberian
railroad was completed there Is little doubt
but that the Russian troops would already
be IN Corea. 1t may be-s now, for Russia
China and England without coming to the
assistance of the Japanese.
A Curious City.
At any rate. great part of the war has
to be fought on Corean soil, and Seoul will
be ground between the upper and the
Eether milIstones. 1t may be wiped out of
existence. If so. the most curious city on
the face OF the globe will pass away. |
visited II six years ago, and my visit Of the
present year included more than a month
of hard work. / have spent days in wan
side of its prisons. and have walked through
its palaces l have talked with all classes
and have seen all sorts of new things at
every turn. There are no guide books Of
Asia. You will not find accurate descrip-
tions Of Seoul in any books of travel The
tourist who comes here without introduce
tons could not find lodging place There
are no hotels. and / am indebted to my
friends among the missionaries, among the
diplomats. and to some of the high TO-
reans for my entertainment through these
many days. I despair of giving YOU an ac-
curate idea of the CCrean capital 1t is so
dlIterent from any other city on the face
of the globe. 1t is such a mass of the
beautiful and the ugly. of civilization and
barbarism, of the old and the new, that /
don't know how to describe II. Take it's
situation. 1t lies in a great basin surround
ed by mountains, which in some places are
as rugged as the widest peaks Of the Rock
les, and which in others have all the beau
uful verdure of the Alleshanies or the
Catskills. The tops OF these mountains oft
r. st in the clouds and masses of vapor hang
IN their recesses above the green plain upon
Which the city is built. They change in
their hues with every change of the heav-
ems, and they give Seoul q setting more
gorgeous than jewels.
The Great Wall.
The basin below is just about large enough
to contain the town, and a great gray wall
from thirty to forty feet high runs along
the sides of these hills bounding the basin
and mounting here and there almost to the
tops of the lower mountains. it scales one
hill of at least one thousand feet in height
and this wall incloses the whole city 1t
was built in nine months by an army of
two hundred thousand workmen, about five
hundred years ago, and it is a piece of
solid masonry, consisting of two thick walls
of granite packed down in the middle with
earth and stones. Its top is so wide that
two carriages could easily be driven about
1t. and it has, on the side facing the coun-
try, a crenellate1 battlement, with holes
large enough for it's defenders TO shoot
through with arrows. There are no cannon
Upon II, and il will he no means OF defense
against the batteries of the Chinese or the
Japs in the present struggle. Its only use
in late years has been to keep out the tigers
and leOpards. This wall is more than six
miles IN length. 1t Is pierced by eight gates
the arches Of which are as beautifully laid
and cut as those of any stone work You
will find in the United States Each of
these great arches has a curved roof Of
black tiles. This rests upon carved wooden
pillars, which rise above the tops of the
walls and which form wa tch-towers for the
soldiers. over the Sreat south gate, the
main entrance to the capital, there are two
such roofs, one above the other. which are
guar led at their corners by miniature de-
mons Of porcelain, who seem to be crawling