A large _tarantass_ with three ponies and a driver, a Korean on another pony, and the Korean headman of a neighboring village, who spoke Russian well, and our saddles were our modest outfit. The details of the two days’ journey to the Tu-men are too monotonous for infliction on the reader. The road was infamous, and at times disappeared altogether on a hillside or in a swamp, and swamps are frequent for the first 40 _versts_. The _tarantass_, always attempting a gallop, bounced, bumped, and thumped, till breathing became a series of gasps. Occasionally we stuck fast in swampy streams where the ice was broken, being extricated by a tremendous, united, and apparently trained, jump on the part of the ponies, which compelled a strong grip of the vehicle with hands and feet, and would have dislocated any other. Mr. Heidemann smoked cigarettes unceasingly, and made no remarks. We crossed the head of Possiet Bay and other inlets at a gallop on thin ice, forded several streams in the aforesaid fashion, and passed through several Korean coast villages given up to the making of salt by a rude process, the finished product being carted away to Hun-chun in China in baskets of finely woven reeds. These Chinese carts are drawn by seven mules each, constantly driven at a gallop. After 30 _versts_ the country became very hilly, with rugged mountains in the distance, all without a tree or bush, and covered with coarse and fine grasses mixed up with myriads of withered flower stalks of _Compositæ_ and _Umbelliferæ_, and here and there a lonely, belated purple aster shivered in the strong keen wind, which made an atmosphere at zero somewhat hard to face. The valleys are flat and broad, and their rich black soil, the product of ages of decaying vegetation, is absolutely stoneless. Almost all crops can be raised upon it. Besides being a rich agricultural country, the region is well suited for cattle breeding. There were large herds on the hills, and haystacks thickly scattered over the landscape indicated abundance of winter keep. The potato, which flourishes and is free from the disease, is largely cultivated, and is now with the Koreans an article of ordinary diet.