It was the hottest day of the year, and it was fortunate that the prettily situated market-place of Syo-im had a new and clean inn, in which it was possible to prolong the noonday halt, and to get a good dinner of fresh and salt fish, vegetables, herbs, sauces, and rice, for the sum of two cents gold. There also, being the market-day, Mr. Miller succeeded in obtaining _cash_ for four silver _yen_ from the pedlars. After passing over a tedious sandy plain with a reserve of fine firs, under which the countless dead of ages lie under great sand mounds held together by nets or branches of trees, we reached at sunset my ideal, a clean, exquisitely situated village of nine houses, of which one was an inn where, contrary to the general rule, we were made cordially welcome.[20] The nine families at Chin-pul possessed seven good-sized fishing boats. That inn is of unusual construction. There is a broad mud platform of which fireplaces and utensils for cooking for man and beast occupy one half, and the other is matted for sleeping and eating. My room, which had no window, but was clean and plastered, opened on this, and as the mercury was at 111° until 3 A.M. owing to the heated floor, I sat at the door nearly all night, so the dawn and an early start, and the coolness of the green and violet shades of the almost rippleless ocean, which laved its varied shore of bays, promontories, and lofty cliffs, were very welcome. A valley opening on the sea which it took five hours to skirt and cross, covered with grain and newly planted rice, is literally fringed with villages, which look comfortably prosperous in spite of exactions. A smaller valley contains about 3,000 acres of rice land only, and on the slopes surrounding all these are rich lands, bearing heavy crops of wheat, millet, barley, cotton, tobacco, castor oil, sesamum, oats, turnips, peas, beans, and potatoes. The ponies are larger and better kept in that region, and the red bulls are of immense size. The black pig, however, is as small and mean as ever. The crops were clean, and the rice dykes and irrigation channels well kept. Good and honest government would create as happy and prosperous a people as the traveller finds in Japan, the soil being very similar, while Korea has a far better climate.