Korea and her neighbors: A narrative of travel, with an account of the recent vicissitudes and present position of the countryBird, Isabella L. (Isabella Lucy)
History
Korea and her neighbors: A narrative of travel, with an account of the recent vicissitudes and present position of the country
Bird, Isabella L. (Isabella Lucy)
Korea -- Description and travel
I was accompanied to old Fusan by a charming English “Una,” who,
speaking Korean almost like a native, moved serenely through the
market-day crowds, welcomed by all. A miserable place I thought it, and
later experience showed that it was neither more nor less miserable
than the general run of Korean towns. Its narrow dirty streets consist
of low hovels built of mud-smeared wattle without windows, straw
roofs, and deep eaves, a black smoke-hole in every wall 2 feet from
the ground, and outside most are irregular ditches containing solid
and liquid refuse. Mangy dogs and blear-eyed children, half or wholly
naked, and scaly with dirt, roll in the deep dust or slime, or pant and
blink in the sun, apparently unaffected by the stenches which abound.
But market-day hid much that is repulsive. Along the whole length of
the narrow, dusty, crooked street, the wares were laid out on mats on
the ground, a man or an old woman, bundled up in dirty white cotton,
guarding each. And the sound of bargaining rose high, and much breath
was spent on beating down prices, which did not amount originally to
the tenth part of a farthing. The goods gave an impression of poor
buyers and small trade. Short lengths of coarse white cotton, skeins
of cotton, straw shoes, wooden combs, tobacco pipes and pouches,
dried fish and seaweed, cord for girdles, paper rough and smooth, and
barley-sugar nearly black, were the contents of the mats. I am sure
that the most valuable stock-in-trade there was not worth more than
three dollars. Each vendor had a small heap of _cash_ beside him, an
uncouth bronze coin with a square hole in the centre, of which at that
time 3,200 _nominally_ went to the dollar, and which greatly trammelled
and crippled Korean trade.
A market is held in Fusan and in many other places every fifth day.
On these the country people rely for all which they do not produce,
as well as for the sale or barter of their productions. Practically
there are no shops in the villages and small towns, their needs
being supplied on stated days by travelling pedlars who form a very
influential guild.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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