The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1900-05-15
GL|MPSES
Of CATHAY
What is Doing in the
Orient.
OFF FOR THE MANEUvERS
Incidents Grave and Gay That Make
Up Japan's Picturesque Ways
of Living.

of Living.
The only business which is proftahIa
in Seoul is said to be money-lending, owing
to the fact that interest stands very high.
1t is at least 40 per cent year. and
those VINO are astute enough can get as
much as 12O per cent And vet we are
told mat only $4,000 yen will be sufficient
for the whole city, inhabited as it is bv
more than 100000 inhabitants. showing
how primitive is the state of business
there Side by side with this high rate of
interest, there is another thing which
interferes equally with the deyelopment
OF business; that is, ginseng transactions.
his business is attended with great risks
but can bring, when successful. a profit
OF even three-fold the principal, and this
IN one season. The unsteady value of
horeah coins must also be regarded as
supplying another factor The value is
constantly huctuating, not only daily but
even hourly, the standard of comparison
being Japanese silver yen. which NAV
properly be considered as Korea, curran-
cy. so singularly sensitive is the reIa-
tlcnshlp between the two that whenever
say; IooOOO yen of the subsidiary coins are
Withdrawn from or produced on the mar
het' the parity, which is only nominal, is
upset at once. II one possesses 30 600 ven
IN Korean coins he can practically CON
troll the market. A Japanese contra ctor
VINO undertakes a piece of work for the
horeah government and receives the
payment IN coins is in imminent danger
OF mourning serious loss unless he
promptly gets the coins exchanged for
silver zen. In general the premium on
n hFt IN does not fan below % per
ctbt, but this frequently rises to as much
as 40 per cent.
There are already in Seoul three Rus
sian missionaries, and they have estab-
lshed a temporary church in the prem
ises Of the Russian Legation. The other
DAY all the Korean dignitaries were in
Vited TO a banquet held to commemorate
the opening of the church. and on the
Pavloff, the three reverend gentlemen
were received in audience by the Emper-
or. The church has already made large
number of converts
The newly started Meiji News Agency
SUPPLIES us queer piece of news in re-
gard TO the Island of U1-long Korea. the
lease of which by Russia occasioned much
talk last year. The report is to the eff
rect that Russia obtained the privilege
of telling the trees growing in the island
by paying sum of $4,000 yen to the
Korean Court-the privilege to extend for
thirty years. Russia has discovered, as a
vey of the island that owing chiefly to
the inaccessibility of the coast, the priv
ilige Is not worth retaining so that she
is now desirous to part with it for a
sum or 100000 yen. But the island being
entirely useless from strategic point OF
view, those who are in a position to
speak with something like authority or
the subject are of opinion that if any
japanese should be inclined to purchase
the privilege he must regard the trans
action purely as a matter of business
that is to say, with the view of turning
to account the trees growing on the ISL
and, and that If he should pay for the
privilege more than the sum given by
Russia, he would incur a loss.
Mrs. Kiku, the wife of a certain Mr..
Takeda of Oita prefecture, died short
time ago and while the funeral prepara-
tions were going on a terrific thunder
storm occurred. in the course of which a
stroke of lightning struck and set on fire
a pile of fuel outside the sorrow stricken
ened to leap onto the house itself, but
were extinguished just in time by the
joint efforts of the assembled mourners
and SympathiZers. The confusion engen-
dered was naturally very great, but after
order had been restored and while the
priest was proceeding TO administer the
last rites to the corpse, having lifted for
that purpose the lid of the coffin, what
was his surprise as we'll as that of the
whole company to find the coffin empty,
the deceased having evidently walked
away or flown away or disappeared some.
how other during the confusion.
Strange to say, no trace of it has so far
been discovered nor explanation forth
coming
sum of about 5000 yen is yearly ex-
pended by the Government towards the
promotion of the fishing industry in Hok-
kado, where 60 to 10 per cent of the en-
tire population are engaged in fishery .
Every year several millions of artificial
ly hatched salmon and maSu are let out
into rivers; and there is a provision to
grant a subsidy of 1000 yen and below
TO newly established private piscicultur-
al stations.
Conscript Motokichi Nakai is now a
soldier in the Eighth Battalion of the In
fantry Regiment of the Formosan garri-
son. From the days when he lived at
home in Mutsu province he has always
been noticed for his filial and loving con-
duct toward his parents. Since his en-
listment he has added to his reputation
by being very thrifty, so that he can
send in whole to his father his govern
ment allowances-a practice which he is
still keeping up. The people of his ma
tive village met in a council recently
and in accordance with a resolution they
then passed, have just sent him purse
of money to show their appreciation of
him.
The sliding doors of the eastern window
Of the house occupied by Toyokichi Ishi-
kawa in Takaoka-mura, Fuji-gori, ST.
ruga province, are said to have become
strangely affected of late or possessed of
"A ghost or spiritualized or whatever you
may call it, always meaning, however.
that they have come 10 possess the power
of locomotion. Some days since the
doors were observed to stand open every
morning, although nobody had done even
so much touch them after they had
been closed the night before. In order
to probe TO the bottom of the mystery if
possible. a member of the family placed
a cup Of water the other night over the
groove in which the doors slide, but the
following morning the cup was found to
be quite dry-though we are not sure
what this test goes to prove The affair
being noised abroad, a number of neigh
hors with the members of the family kept