The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-02

rains for two or three months off and on, giving a plentiful supply of water for crops If the mountains had not been skinned of their timber the rainfall is such that they might be cultivated clear to their tops and by re-forestation such farming will probably be done.
 A Land of Mountains.
 Corea, like Japan. Is a land of moun- tains but the mountains are less steep and there are more broad, deep valleys There is a range which runs north and south from Manehuria to the Strait of Corea, with spurs branching off here and thehre. The range is not lofty. There are but few peaks a mile above the sea, and the highest of them is only 5000 feet This is Mount Paik-To-San. an extinct volcano whose crater is filled with water, forming a beautiful lake of unknown depth. The average hills are above the altitude of the Blue Ridge in Virginia, and some slope off into plains.
 All of these mountains were at one time well wooded There were forests from one end of the peninsula to the oth- CT. and the farms run up the sides of the hills. Today in the central and lower parts of Corea the tops of the ridges are as bare as the desert of Sahara, and there is only a thin growth of pines on the sides. This is so all the way from Fusan to Seoul Right here at the cap ital, which lies in a basin surrounded by mountains then most of the hills are as bare as the Rockies, and the clay has been washed down into the valleys. Trees will grow easily, but the people skin the mountains year after year of every bit of vegetation in order that it may be used for fuel First they cut down the trees. Later they chop away the sprouts and young growth and finally pull up the grass until the country looks as though it had been plowed over.
 How Corea Keeps Warm.
 At this writing the streets of Seoul are filled with bullocks ponies and men load ed with fuel which they have brought into the city for sale. Porters go along with carloads of evergreen branches fas- tened to the jiggy a sort of framework which they wear upon their backs. Bull locks by scores are entirely covered with bundles of similar fuel. A single animal will carry almost 1000 pounds, or as much as one horse could haul in cart in our country Indeed the load is so large that you could not put it into an American cart. It rises six or eight feet above the back of the bullock, and hangs down on the sides almost to his feet, so that one sees little more than his head, tail and hoofs as he goes along the road There are ponies carrying wood, chopped into stove lengths and tied up in bum dles and men laden with charcoal which has been made in the hills.
 The chief form of heating here is by flues which run under the floor, and straw twigs and pine branches are ex- cellent for this purpose. bunch is put In at the entrance of the fues and light ed and its flames spread out, making
 One of the first works of the Japanese will be to stop the skinning of the noun tains. They will plant trees as fast as possible upon the available hills, thus the floors hot almost to roasting
 al t,, creasing the land susceptible to euti- vation. They have already planted model forests in the vicinity of Seoul, Pyengyang and Taiku and as soon as the nurseries are in good shape will extend the programme to other parts of the country.
 Today most of the farms of Corea are confined to the valleys. The area being cultivated is just about half that which Is titled in Japan, and if it were as in- tensively farmed 1t would be feeding 25O0O,0O0 people instead of less than 15,- here is naturally much better than that of Japan but I doubt if the product is one-fourth as large. The farmers fer tilze but little and they know nothing of artificial manures. During a recent trip over the country I saw men carrying manure from the villages to the fields on their backs, and farther on bullocks were used for the purpose, the stuff be- ing loaded into baskets of straw rope which hung down on each side of the animal.
 Everywhere the methods of cultivation were crude. The blows were little more than forlsed sticks shod with iron They are one-handled affairs, drawn by bull