“See the sights first and then pay,” they said, the glorious views and the quaint picturesqueness of the monastic buildings clustering on the crags above the cataracts being the sight _par excellence_. It was refreshing to turn from the contemplation of the sensual, acquisitive, greedy faces of most of the monks to Nature at her freshest and fairest, on one of the loveliest days of early June. The interiors of the temples are shabby and dirty, the paint is scaling off the roofs, and the floors and even the altars were hidden under layers of herbs drying for kitchen use. Besides the tablet to the first king of the present dynasty in a handsome tablet-house, the noteworthy “sight” to be seen is a small temple dedicated to the “Five Hundred Disciples.” Sök-wang Sa is not a holy place, and the artist who caricatured the devout and ascetic followers of the ascetic Sakymuni has bequeathed a legacy of unhallowed suggestion to its inmates! The “Five Hundred” are stone images not a foot in height, arranged round the dusty temple in several tiers, each one with a silk cap on, worn with more or less of a jaunty air on one side of the head or falling over the brow. The variety of features and expression is wonderful; all Eastern nationalities are represented, and there are not two faces or attitudes alike. The whole display shows genius, though not of a high order. Among the infinite variety, one figure has deeply set eyes, an aquiline nose, and thin lips; another a pug nose, squinting eyes, and a broad grinning mouth; one is Mongolian, another Caucasian, and another approximates to the Negro type. Here is a stout, jolly fellow, with a leer and a broad grin suggestive of casks of porter and the archaic London drayman; there is an idiot with drooping head, receding brow and chin, and a vacant stare; here again is a dark stage villain, with red cheeks and a cap drawn low over his forehead; then Mr. Pecksniff confronts one with an air of sanctimoniousness obviously difficult to retain; Falstaff outdoes his legendary jollity; and priests and monks of all nations leer at the beholders from under their jaunty caps. It is an exhibition of unsanctified genius. Nearly all the figures look worse for drink, and fatuous smiles, drunken leers, and farcical grins are the rule, the effect of all being aggravated by the varied and absurd arrangements of the caps. The grotesqueness is indescribable, and altogether “unedifying.” It was a great change to get on the broad main road to Wön-san, and to see telegraph poles once more. There was plenty of goods and passenger traffic across the fine plain covered with rice and grain, margined by bluffs, and dotted with what have obviously once been islands, near which Wön-san is situated.