Police--Detectives--The plank-walk--The square board--The wooden blocks for hands and feet--Floggings--The bamboo rod--The stick--The flexible board--A flogging in Seoul--One hundred strokes for three-halfpence --Wounds produced--Tender-hearted soldiers--Imprisonment--Exile--Status of women, children, and bachelors--Guilds and the law--Nobles and the law--Serfdom--mild form of slavery. CHAPTER XVI Executions--Crucified and carried through the streets--The execution ground--Barbarous mode of beheading--Noble criminals--Paternal love--Shut out--Scaling the wall--A catastrophe--A nightmare. CHAPTER XVII The "King's procession"--Removing houses--Foolhardy people--Beaten to death--Cavalry soldiers--Infantry--Retainers--Banners--Luxurious saddles--The King and his double--Royal palanquins--The return at night. CHAPTER XVIII Fights--Prize fights--Fist fights--Special moon for fighting--Summary justice--The use of the top-knot--Cruelty--A butcher combatant Stone fights--Belligerent children--Battle between two guilds--Wounded and killed--The end of the battle postponed--Soldiers' fights. CHAPTER XIX Fires--The greatest peril--A curious way of saving one's house--The anchor of safety--How it worked--Making an opposition wind--Saved by chance--A good trait in the native character--Useful friends. CHAPTER XX A trip to Poo-kan--A curious monastery. CHAPTER XXI Corean physiognomy--Expressions of pleasure--Displeasure--Contempt --Fear--Pluck--Laughter--Astonishment--Admiration--Sulkiness--Jealousy --Intelligence--Affection--Imagination--Dreams--Insanity--Its principal causes--Leprosy--The family--Men and women--Fecundity--Natural and artificial deformities--Abnormalities--Movements and attitudes--The Corean hand--Conservatism. LIST OF PLATES PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR AN OFFICIAL GOING TO COURT THE PEKIN PASS A WATER-COOLIE H.R.H. PRINCE MIN-YOUNG-HUAN AN INFANTRY SOLDIER A STUDY FROM STILL-LIFE CHAPTER I Christmas on board--Fusan--A body-snatcher--The Kiung-sang Province--The cotton production--Body-snatching extraordinary--Imperatrice Gulf--Chemulpo. [Illustration: CHEMULPO] It was on a Christmas Day that I set out for Corea. The year was 1890. I had been several days at Nagasaki, waiting for the little steamer, _Higo-Maru_, of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha (Japan Steamship Company), which was to arrive, I think, from Vladivostock, when a message was brought to me saying that she was now in port, and would sail that afternoon for Tsushima, Goto, and the Corean ports. I went on board, and, our vessel's anchor being raised at four o'clock, we soon steamed past Battenberg Island and got away from the picturesque Bay of Nagasaki. This was the last I saw of Japan.