Entering through a broad gate guarded by Japanese sentries we traversed street after street of thatched houses and shops crowded with soldiers and Koreans, who appeared to be doing a brisk trade in the common necessities of life. The smells and abominations of the city are surpassed--in my experience--only by those of Jerusalem. There is one clean spot, and that is the American Mission, which is doing excellent work, and reports most favourably on the intelligence of the youth of the country, their eagerness to learn, and their capacity for developing domestic virtues. The Koreans are commonly supposed to have no religion except a complicated system of ancestor worship. This is an error, for they also worship demons, and are full of strange superstitions. Walking at night through one of the main streets--which in the darkness I mistook for a sewer--my attention was arrested by the tinkling of a bell, accompanied by a droning chant. Mr. Graham Lee, an American missionary, guided me to a group of natives squatted at the door of a house. In the middle of the throng sat a blind man tinkling a tiny brass bell with a shell, and muttering an incantation over a bowl of rice, some pickles, and three small cups of native spirit. He was exorcising the devil that had entered a man who lay sick in the house, and the food and drink were to tempt the evil spirit out of doors. The duty of exorcist is the special province of the blind, who are the wizards of the land. I remained in Pyng-yang no longer than was necessary to secure a permit to travel North, and to change some Japanese notes for the current coin. Owing to the issue of nickles, the intrinsic value of which is only one-eighteenth of their face value--without gold or silver to redeem them--the number of counterfeit coins is enormous. Spurious money is imported in large quantities from Japan, and permission to coin nickles is freely granted to private individuals who can pay for the privilege of robbing their neighbours. The only medium of exchange is the half yang, of which twenty make one shilling, so that the bulk and weight of even a few days’ expenditure are serious considerations for the traveller. Cash, circular pieces of brass with a square hole, are also in circulation.