During the land journey from Chang-an Sa to Wön-san I had better opportunities of seeing the agricultural methods of the Koreans than in the valleys of the Han. As compared with the exquisite neatness of the Japanese and the diligent thriftiness of the Chinese, Korean agriculture is to some extent wasteful and untidy. Weeds are not kept down in the summer as they ought to be, stones are often left on the ground, and there is a raggedness about the margins of fields and dykes and a dilapidation about stone walls which is unpleasing to the eye. The paths through the fields are apt to be much worn and fringed with weeds, and the furrows are not so straight as they might be. Yet on the whole the cultivation is much better and the majority of the crops far cleaner than I had been led to expect. Domestic animals are very few, and very little fertilizing material is applied to the ground except in the neighborhood of Seoul and other cities, a fact which makes its exceeding fertility very noteworthy. The rainfall is abundant but not excessive, and the desolating floods which afflict Korea’s opposite neighbor, Japan, are as unknown as earthquakes. Irrigation is only necessary for rice, which is the staple of Korea. Except on certain rice lands, two crops a year are raised throughout central and southern Korea, the rice being planted in June, or rather transplanted from the nurseries in which it is sown in May, and is harvested early in October, when the ground is ploughed and barley or rye is sown, which ripens in May or early June of the next year, after which water is let in, the field is again ploughed while flooded, and the rice plants are set out in rows of “clumps,” two or four or even six plants in a “clump.” Where only one crop is raised, the rice field lies fallow from the end of October till the following May. In wheat, barley, or rye fields the sowing is in October, and the harvest in May or June, after which beans, peas, and other vegetables are sown. Along the “great roads,” as the crops approach ripeness, elevated watch-sheds are erected in the fields as safeguards against depredations. The crops, on the whole, are very fine, and would be immense were it not for the paucity of fertilizing material. Agricultural implements are rude and few. A wooden ploughshare with a removable iron shoe is used which turns the furrows the reverse way to ours. A wooden spade, also shod with iron, is largely used for heavy work. This, which excites the ridicule of foreigners as a gratuitous waste of man power, is furnished with several ropes attached to the blade, each of which is jerked by a man while another man guides the blade into the ground by its long handle. The other implements are the same sort of sharp-pointed sharp hoe which is in use in China, and which in the hands of the eastern peasant fills the place of shovel, hoe, and spade, a reaping hook, a short knife, a barrow, and a bamboo rake which is largely used in the denudation of the hills.