This city lies encircled by low mountains, whose treeless and bare outlines cut the blue horizon with a bold abruptness. Among the hills and mountain passes are pretty woods and groves--and here lies nestled many a little hamlet, entered through some charming lane, bordered with blossoming bushes of clematis, eglantine, hawthorn or syringa, in richest profusion. Mr. Underwood was often my guide on these excursions; sometimes we walked on the city wall, and saw the distant mountains and the sleeping villages beneath us, bathed in glorious moonlight, and thanked God for casting our lives in a land of so much beauty and among a people so kindly and teachable. [Illustration: THE GREAT MARKET AT CHEENJU] [Illustration: SURROUNDINGS OF SEOUL. PAGE 32] During all these months and the following winter foundations were still busily laying, language helps and Bible translations were under way, and through hospital and school, as well as by direct evangelistic effort, people were being reached. The number of attendants upon the services in the little chapel was daily increasing, and reports came from the natives working in the country of inquirers and converts there, which made it seem necessary to make another extended trip as soon as possible. A second trip had already been made by Mr. Underwood, selling books and simple medicines, and gathering in here and there a little handful of converts. He met with great encouragement, but baptized few. During his first trip he traveled to the northern border of Korea, stopping in all the large towns, Songdo, Anju, Pyeng Yang, Kangai, Haiju, Ouiju. During the entire year less than twenty-five were baptized, and from the first altogether up to that time hardly fifty, while Methodists and Presbyterians together up to 1889 numbered only a little over one hundred. In April of 1888 he baptized seven men at Sorai, a village in Whang Hai, where the Gospel had been brought in from China by a Mr. Saw Sang Hyen, a convert of Mr. Ross’. Some of these men had come to the capital in the spring of 1887 and three had been baptized after careful examination.