A row up the river in his boat, kindly furnished by Mr. Kikuchi, the Japanese Resident, afforded several pleasant hours of recreation as well as an opportunity to see for ourselves something more of the present condition and future prospects of the chief city of Northern Korea. The city gate through which we reached the river is the finest thing about its ancient fortifications. The views of the bank, which rises in most places bluff and high above the water, are very picturesque and crowded with scenes of both immediate and historical interest. Scores of junks and sampans, loaded with many kinds of goods—for the most part, however, of no great value—are either moored to the narrow beach below the bank or are slowly finding their way up and down the river. At different heights of the banks, standing on projecting ledges or on platforms, men were cutting inscriptions upon the rocky sides in Chinese characters. These were designed to celebrate for future generations the virtues and successes of living merchants and magistrates; but these workmen of to-day were only adding a few more to the much more numerous inscriptions commemorating the otherwise forgotten and, for the most part undoubtedly, really ignoble dead. By the brink of the river were the Korean women at their never-ceasing task of washing and pounding dry the white clothing of their male lords. At one bend in the river, where the projecting cliff acts as an effective breakwater against the winter ice and the summer freshets, the top is crowned by a pavilion which occupies the place where negotiations went on between the Chinese and the Japanese at the time of the Hideyoshi invasion. [Illustration: Water-Gate at Pyeng-Yang.]