All distances in every direction are measured from the front gate of the magistrates’ offices, the standard of all being the palace at Seoul. Not the least interesting sights to the traveller are the memorial stones set up and inscribed with a view to commemorate local or national worthies, or the events of war, famine, or philanthropy. The Coreans are “idolaters of letters,” and the erection of memorial tablets or columns occasionally becomes a passion. Sometimes the inscriptions are the means of stirring up patriotism, as the following inscription shows. It was graven on a stone in front of a castle erected after the French and American expeditions, and was copied by a Japanese correspondent. “It is nothing else than selling the kingdom into slavery, in order to avoid war, to make peace without fighting when any Western nation comes to attack it; such should never be done even by our descendants thousands of years hence.” In this country, in which sumptuary laws prevent the humbler classes from travelling on horseback, and where wagons and steam-roads are unknown, the roads are lively with numerous foot-passengers. Palanquins are used by the better classes and the wealthy. The rambling life of many of the people, the goodly numbers of that character not unknown in Christendom—the tramp—the necessities of trade, literary examinations, government service, and holy pilgrimages, prevent too many weeds from growing in the highways. In travelling over the high roads one meets a variety of characters that would satisfy a Corean Dickens, or the Japanese author who wrote the Tokaidō Hizakurigé (Leg-hair, i.e., “Shanks’ mare,” on the East Sea Road). Bands of students on their way to the capital or provincial literary examinations, some roystering youths in the full flow of spirits, are hastening on, others, gray-headed and solemn, are wending their way to fail for the twentieth time. Pompous functionaries in umbrella-hats, on horseback, before whom ordinary folks dismount or kneel or bow, brush past with noisy attendants. Pilgrims in pious garb are on their way to some holy mountain or famous shrine, men to pray for success in business, women to beseech the gods for offspring. Here hobbles along the lame or rheumatic, or the pale-faced invalid is borne to the hot springs. Here is a party of pic-nickers, or poets intent on the joys of drink, verse, and scenery. Here a troop of strolling players or knot of masqueraders are in peripatetic quest of a livelihood, toiling fearfully hard in order to escape settled industry. Nobles in mourning pass with their faces invisible. Postal slaves, women doing the work of express agents in forwarding parcels, pass the merchant with his loaded pack-horses returning from Sunto, or going to Gensan. There a packman is doing horse’s work in transportation. Here an ox laden with brushwood is led by a woman. Beggars, corpses, kang-si, or men dead of hunger in times