The province of Serene Loyalty lies mostly between the thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh parallel. Its principal rivers are the Keum, flowing into Basil’s Bay, and another, which empties into Prince Jerome Gulf. Its northeast corner, is made by the Han River bending in a loop around the White Cloud (Paik Un) Mountain. Fertile flats and valleys abound. The peninsula of Nai-po (within the waters), in the northwestern corner, is often called the “Granary of the Kingdom.” Most of the rice of the Nai-po, and the province generally, is raised for export to the capital and the north. In the other circuits the rice lands are irrigated by leading the water from the streams through each field, which is divided from the other by little walls or barriers of earth, while in this region, and in Chulla, the farmers more frequently make great reservoirs or ponds, in which water is stored for use in dry weather. The mountains are the great reservoirs of moisture, for in all the peninsula there is not a lake of noticeable size. The coast line is well indented with bays and harbors, and the run to Shantung across the Yellow Sea is easily made by junks, and even in open boats. On this account the native Christians and French missionaries have often chosen this province as their gate of entry into the “land of martyrs.” In the history of Corean Christianity this province will ever be remembered as the nursery of the faith. Its soil has been most richly soaked with the blood of the native believers. With unimportant exceptions, every town along its northern border, and especially in the Nai-po, has been sown with the seeds of the faith. The first converts and confessors, the most devoted adherents of their French teachers, the most gifted and intelligent martyrs, were from Nai-po, and it is nearly certain that the fires of Roman Christianity still smoulder here, and will again burst into flame at the first fanning of favorable events. The three great highways from Fusan to the capital cross this province in the northeastern portion. Over these roads the rival Japanese armies of invasion, led by Konishi and Kato, passed in jealous race in 1592, reaching the capital, after fighting and reducing castles on the way, in eighteen days after disembarkation. Chion-Chiu, the fortress on whose fate the capital depended, lies in the northeast, where two of the roads converge. The western, or sea road, that comes up from the south, hugs the shore through the entire length of the province. Others, along which the Japanese armies marched in 1592, and again in 1597, traverse the central part. Along one of these roads, the captive Hollanders, almost the first Europeans in Corea, rode in 1663, and one of the cities of which Hamel speaks, Kon-sio (Kong-Chiu), is the capital and residence of the provincial governor.