The downward path of Puk Han winds around the mountain, from the Southern gate in the wall toward the northwest; and although it is quite too steep and rough for safe descent in chairs, it is not particularly difficult for those who walk it with sound knee-joints and ordinarily careful and judicious feet. For the first five or six miles it affords an uninterrupted series of interesting and beautiful views. Here the colors of the rock, when seen in full sunlight, were trying for all but the most insensitive eyes. But as the light was modified by the occasional passing of clouds, or by the changes in the relation of the path to the points of the compass, the effect was kaleidoscopic in character on a magnificent scale. On this side of the mountain the shapes of the rocks are peculiar. In general, each mountain-ridge—supreme, subordinate, or still inferior—is composed of a series of pyramidally-shaped granite structures, rising higher and higher as to their visible summits; but with their sides welded, as it were, together, and their surfaces of disintegrated yellowish or reddish rock. Between the sides of the pyramids in each series, and between the different series, and between the higher ranges composed of the series, are dry ravines, down which the summer rains descend in torrents, keeping the slopes of all these rocky elevations almost bare of verdure. Thus there is produced an aspect of severe grandeur quite out of proportion to the real height of the mountains. But this aspect is relieved by an abundant growth of wild flowers and flowering shrubs—such as have been already named and still others—with more gorgeous blossoms than I have anywhere else seen produced by the same species. With these the ladies filled all hands, and all the luncheon baskets—and then even the chairs, which, however, we took again as soon as it became practicable, to the relief of feet and knees; and thus we entered the city by the North-West Gate, where we stopped awhile to rest the men and to enjoy the magnificent view of Seoul from the inside of the gate. The excursion up Puk Han will certainly be remembered by some of the party as one of the most enjoyable to be obtained anywhere. It far surpasses most of those much-lauded by the guide-books in other more frequented but really less rewarding portions of the world.