Corea or Cho-sen: The Land of the Morning CalmLandor, Arnold Henry Savage
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Corea or Cho-sen: The Land of the Morning Calm
Landor, Arnold Henry Savage
Korea -- Description and travel
only about 10 hands high, and even less sometimes, go twenty-five or
thirty miles a day quite easily, with a weight of a couple of hundred
pounds on their backs, quickly toddling along without stopping, unless it
be to administer a sound kick to some bystander or to bite the legs of
the rider. These ponies have a funny little way of getting from under
you, if you ride them with an English saddle. They bend their legs till
they see you firmly planted on the ground, and then quickly withdraw
backwards leaving you, with your legs wide apart and standing like a
fool, to meditate on equine wickedness in the Realm of the Morning Calm.
They are indeed the trickiest little devils for their size I have ever
seen; and for viciousness and love of fighting, I can recommend you to no
steed more capable of showing these qualities. The average price of an
animal as above described varies from the large sum of five shillings to
as much as thirty shillings (at the rate of two shillings per Mexican
dollar), the price of course varying, as with us, according to the breed,
age, training, condition, &c., of the animal.
These ponies are much used all over the kingdom, for good roads for wheel
traffic hardly exist in the country, and wide horse-tracks form
practically the whole means of communication between the capital and the
most important ports and cities in the different provinces of Corea. They
are used both for riding purposes and as pack-ponies, "for light articles
only," like the racks in our railway carriages, but when heavy loads are
to be conveyed from one place to another, especially over long distances,
the frail pony is discarded and replaced by the sturdy ox. These horned
carriers are pretty much of a size, and fashioned, so far as I could see,
after the style of our oxen, except that they are apparently leaner by
nature, and almost always black or very dark grey in colour; their horns,
however, are rather short. They carry huge weights on a wooden angular
saddle which is planted on their backs, and a _Mapu_ invariably
accompanies each animal when loaded; indeed, in the case of the ponies
the man even carries on his own back the food both for himself and for
his beast, the latter generally having the precedence in eating his
share. The sleeping accommodation also is, as a rule, amicably divided
between quadruped and biped, and, taken all round, it cannot be said that
either is any the worse for their brotherly relations. I firmly believe
that the _Mapus_ are infinitely better-natured towards their animals than
towards their wives or their children, who, as you will find by-and-by,
are often cruelly ill-treated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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