About 60 _li_ from Wön-san are some large grass-covered mounds, of which the Koreans do not care to speak, as they regard them as associated with an ancient Korean custom, now looked upon as barbarous. During the last dynasty, and more than five centuries ago, it was customary, when people from age and infirmity became burdensome to their relations, to incarcerate them in the stone cells which these mounds contain, with a little food and water, and leave them there to die. In similar mounds, elsewhere in Korea, bowls and jars of coarse pottery have been found, as well as a few specimens of gray _celadon_. There is nothing sensational about Wön-san.[25] It has no “booms” in trade or land, but “keeps the even tenor of its way.” It is to me far the most attractive of the treaty ports. Its trim Japanese settlement, from which green hills rise abruptly, backed by fine mountain forms, dignified by snow for seven months of the year, and above all, the exquisite caves to the northwest, where the sea murmurs in cool grottos, and beats the pure white sand into ripples at the feet of cliffs hidden by flowers, ferns, and grass, and its air of dreamy repose--“a land where it is always afternoon”--point to its future as that of a salubrious and popular sanitarium. FOOTNOTES: [20] A _kwan-ja_, being an official passport, lays a traveller open to the suspicion that, like officials, he will take the best of everything he can get without paying for it, and this dread, added to a natural distrust of foreigners, led to more or less unwillingness to receive us in many places, the _mapu_ having to console the people by asseverating that I paid the full price for all I got, and that even when I tore a sheet of paper from the window I paid for it! [21] February, 1896. [22] I ’Twas years ago that Kim and I Struck hands and swore, however dry The lip might be or sad the heart, The merry wine should have no part In mitigating sorrow’s blow Or quenching thirst. ’Twas long ago. II And now I’ve reached the flood-tide mark Of life; the ebb begins, and dark The future lowers. The tide of wine Will never ebb. ’Twill aye be mine To mourn the desecrated fane Where that lost pledge of youth lies slain. III Nay, nay, begone! The jocund bowl Again shall bolster up my soul Against itself. What, good-man, hold! Canst tell me where red wine is sold? Nay, just beyond that peach tree there? Good luck be thine, I’ll thither fare. [23] LOVE SONG Farewell’s a fire that burns one’s heart, And tears are rains that quench in part, But then the winds blow in one’s sighs, And cause the flames again to rise. My soul I’ve mixed up with the wine, And now my love is drinking, Into his orifices nine Deep down its spirit’s sinking. To keep him true to me and mine, A potent mixture is the wine.