The fifty monks of P’yo-un Sa were very friendly, and not impecunious. One gave up to me his oven-like cell, but repaid himself for the sacrifice by indulging in ceaseless staring. The wind bells of the establishment and the big bell have a melody in their tones such as I have rarely heard, and when at 4 A.M. bells of all sizes and tones announced that “prayer is better than sleep,” there was nothing about the sounds to jar on the pure freshness of morning. The monks are well dressed and jolly, and have a well-to-do air which clashes with any pretensions to asceticism. The rule of these monasteries is a strict vegetarianism which allows neither milk nor eggs, and in the whole region there are neither fowls nor domestic animals. Not to wound the prejudices of my hosts, I lived on tea, rice, honey water, edible pine nuts, and a most satisfying combination of pine nuts and honey. After a light breakfast on these delicacies, the sub-abbot, took me to see his grandmother, a very bright pleasing woman of eighty, who came from Seoul thirteen years ago and built a house within the monastery grounds, in order to die in its quiet blessedness. There I had to eat a second ethereal meal, and the hospitable hostess forced on me a pot of exquisite honey and a bag of pine nuts. These, the product of the _Pinus pinea_, which grows profusely throughout the range, furnish an important and nutritious article of monkish diet, and are exported in quantities as a luxury. They are rich and very oily, and turn rancid soon after being shelled. The honey is also locally produced. The beehives, which usually stand two together in cavities in the rocks, are hollow logs with clay covers mounted on blocks of wood or stone. Leaving this friendly hostess and the seven nuns of the nunnery behind, the sub-abbot showed me the direction in which to climb, for road there is none, and at parting presented me with a fan.