On the slope of a hillside above a pleasant valley lies the town of An-byöng, once, judging from the extent of its decaying walls and fortifications, and the height of its canopied but ruinous gate towers, a large city. The _yamen_ and other Government buildings are well kept, and being in good repair, are in striking contrast to those previously seen on the route. The “main street” is, however, nothing but a dirty alley. The town has a diminishing population, and though it makes some paper from the _Brousonettia Papyrifera_, and has several schools, and exchanges rice and beans for foreign cottons at Wön-san, it has a singularly decaying look, and is altogether unworthy of its position as being one of the chief places in the province of Ham-gyöng. Outside of it the road crosses a remarkably broad river bed by a bridge 720 feet long, so dilapidated that the ponies put their feet through its rotten sods several times. From An-byöng to Ta-ri-mak, a short distance from Nam-San on the main road from Seoul to Wön-san, is a long and tedious ride through thinly peopled country and pine woods full of graves. We spent two nights there at a very noisy and disagreeable inn, in which privacy was unattainable and the vermin were appalling. There the host was specially unwilling to take in foreigners, on the ground that we should not pay, a suspicion which irritated our friendly _mapu_, who vociferated at the top of their voices that we paid “even for the smallest things we got.” The swinging season was at hand, each amusement having its definite date for beginning and ending, and in every village swings were being erected on tall straight poles. Wong could never resist the temptation of taking a swing, which always amused the people. At this inn there were some musical performers who made both night and day wearisome to me, but gave great pleasure to others. I have not previously mentioned my sufferings on the Han from the sounds produced by itinerant musicians, and by the _mu-tang_ or sorceress and her coadjutors; but, as has been forcibly brought out in a paper on Korean music by Mr. Hulbert in the _Korean Repository_,[21] the sounds are peculiar and unpleasing, because we neither know nor feel what they are intended to express, and we bring to Korean music not the Korean temperament and training but the Western, which demands “time” as an essential. It may be added that the Koreans, like their neighbors the Japanese, love our music as little as we love theirs, and for the same reason, that the ideas we express by it are unfamiliar to them.