The long road outside the Palace was lined with Korean cavalry, who turned their faces to the wall and their backs and their ponies’ tails to the King. Great numbers of Korean soldiers carrying various makes of muskets, dressed in rusty black, brown, and blue cotton uniforms, trousers sometimes a foot too short, at others a foot too long, white wadded socks, string shoes, and black felt hats of Tyrolese style, with pink ribbon round the crowns, stood in awkward huddles, mixed up with the newly-created Seoul police in blue European uniforms, and a number of handsome overfed ponies of Court officials, with saddles over a foot high, gorgeous barbaric trappings, red pompons on their heads, and a flow of red manes. The populace stood without speech or movement. After a long delay and much speculation as to whether the King at the last moment would resist the foreign pressure, the procession emerged from the Palace gate--huge flags on trident-headed poles, purple bundles carried aloft, a stand of stones conveyed with much ceremony[34]--groups of scarlet- and blue-robed men in hats of the same colors, shaped like fools’ caps, the King’s personal servants in yellow robes and yellow bamboo hats, and men carrying bannerets. Then came the red silk umbrella, followed not by the magnificent State chair with its forty bearers, but by a plain wooden chair with glass sides, in which sat the sovereign, pale and dejected, borne by only four men. The Crown Prince followed in a similar chair. Mandarins, ministers, and military officers were then assisted to mount their caparisoned ponies, and each, with two attendants holding his stirrups and two more leading his pony, fell in behind the Home Minister, riding a dark donkey, and rendered conspicuous by his foreign saddle and foreign guard. When the procession reached the sacred enclosure, the military escort and the greater part of the cavalcade remained outside the wall, only the King, dignitaries, and principal attendants proceeding to the altar. The grouping of the scarlet-robed men under the dark pines was most effective from an artistic point of view, and from a political standpoint the taking of the following oath by the Korean King was one of the most significant acts in the tedious drama of the late war. [Illustration: KOREAN THRONE.] THE KING’S OATH.