Korean tiger skins are very fine when the animal has been killed in the winter, but unfortunately the natives do not understand the proper method of preserving them, and those which are taken away, as well as the leopard skins, very soon become denuded of hair. The natives prize the claws very highly, and often remove them as soon as the beast is killed. They are found from the Manchurian border through the whole country, among the mountains; more than once have they been seen in the capital since my arrival, and only a few months after I landed a leopard was seen in the Russian legation compound next to our house. As our homes were all bungalows, and the extreme heat of summer nights necessitated open windows, I often lay awake after this for hours at night, certain that I heard the stealthy, heavy tread and deep breathing of one of these creatures in my room. But to return to our experiences in the tiger valley, which were not yet done. While Mr. Underwood and I were taking a walk together that evening we heard in the valley below us the sharp report of a gun. The house in which we were was on the side of a hill, while our servants’ quarters, and indeed most of the village, was in the valley just below. Shortly some one came running to tell us that a tiger had just been shot. This was slightly exciting, but turned out later to have been a mere excuse to quiet any alarm I might have felt on hearing the explosion of the gun. The real facts were, it seemed, that a band of some thirty men, probably fugitives from justice, and robbers, had conspired to visit us that night at midnight and destroy the vile foreigners who had dared to intrude into the sacred precincts of this mountain land, and thus warned, no more strangers should trouble their shores. They had drunk together to the success of their plot, and the leader had rather overdone this part of it. Far gone in intoxication, he had been too much fuddled to keep to the plan, had come several hours in advance of the time, had loudly boasted in the little inn of their intentions, and fired his gun in a fit of bravado. At the command of the head of the village he was immediately seized and locked up and his gun taken away. It was a poor old-fashioned affair, arranged with a long fuse wound around the bearer’s wrist, lighted when ready to fire, and inserted in an arm held up by the trigger, the pulling of which raised and removed a small cap which protected the priming powder and dropped the fuse upon it, thus firing the gun. It is with these awkward and clumsy weapons that the cool Korean hunters face and shoot the most formidable leopards, tigers, wild boars and bears which abound in the mountains of Korea. The Korean nobles use tiger and leopard skins on their carrying chairs, and the teeth and claws for ornaments, while the bones, when ground up, are supposed to be unrivalled as a tonic.