[19] “Recent Journeys in Korea,” _Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society_, May, 1896. CHAPTER XI DIAMOND MOUNTAIN MONASTERIES It was a glorious day for the Pass of Tan-pa-Ryöng (1,320 feet above Ma-ri Kei), the western barrier of the Keum-Kang San region. Mr. Campbell, of H.B.M.’s Consular Service, one of the few Europeans who has crossed it, in his charming narrative mentions that it is impassable for laden animals, and engaged porters for the ascent, but though the track is nothing better than a torrent bed abounding in great boulders, angular and shelving rocks, and slippery corrugations of entangled tree roots, I rode over the worst part, and my ponies made nothing of carrying the baggage up the rock-ladders. The mountain-side is covered with luxuriant and odorous vegetation, specially oak, chestnut, hawthorn, varieties of maple, pale pink azalea, and yellow clematis, interspersed with a few distorted pines, primulas and lilies of the valley covering the mossy ground. From the spirit shrine on the summit a lovely panorama unfolds itself, billows of hilly woodland, gleams of water, wavy outlines of hills, backed by a jagged mountain wall, attaining an altitude of over 6,000 feet in the loftiest pinnacle of the Keum-Kang San. A fair land of promise, truly! But this pass is a rubicon to him who seeks the Diamond Mountain with the intention of immuring himself for life in one of its many monasteries. For its name, Tan-pa, “crop-hair,” was bestowed on it early in the history of Korean Buddhism for a reason which remains. There those who have chosen the cloister emphasize their abandonment of the world by cutting off the “topknot” of married dignity, or the heavy braid of bachelorhood. The eastern descent of the Tan-pa-Ryöng is by a series of zigzags, through woods and a profusion of varied and magnificent ferns. A long day followed of ascents and descents, deep fords of turbulent streams, valley villages with terrace cultivation of buckwheat, and glimpses of gray rock needles through pine and persimmon groves, and in the late afternoon, after struggling through a rough ford in which the water was halfway up the sides of the ponies, we entered a gorge and struck a smooth, broad, well-made road, the work of the monks, which traverses a fine forest of pines and firs above a booming torrent.