At noon we reached Ko-yang, a poor place of 300 hovels, with ruinous official buildings of some size, once handsome. At this, and every other magistracy up to Phyöng-yang, from 20 to 30 Japanese soldiers were quartered in the _yamens_. The people hated them with a hatred which is the legacy of three centuries, but could not allege anything against them, admitting that they paid for all they got, molested no one, and were seldom seen outside the _yamen_ gates. There the _mapu_ halted for two hours to give their ponies and themselves a feed. This midday halt is one bone of contention between travellers and themselves. No amount of hunting and worrying them shortens the halt by more than ten minutes, and I preferred peace of spirit, only insisting that when the road admitted of it, as it frequently did, they should travel 12 _li_, or about three and three-quarter miles, an hour. At Ko-yang I began the custom of giving the landlord of the inn at which I halted 100 _cash_ for the room in which I rested, which gave great satisfaction. I had my mattress laid upon the hot floor, and as Im, by instinct, secured privacy for me by fastening up mats and curtains over the paper walls and doors, these midday halts were very pleasant. Almost every house in these roadside villages and small towns has a low table of such food as Koreans love laid out under the eaves. Beyond Ko-yang, standing out in endless solemnity above a pine wood on the side of a steep hill, are two of the strangely few antiquities of which Korea can boast. These are two _mirioks_, colossal busts, about 35 feet in height, carved out of the solid rock. They are supposed to be relics of the very early days of Korean Buddhism, when men were religious enough to toil at such stupendous works, and to represent the male and female elements in nature. They are side by side. One wears a round and the other a square hat. The Buddhistic calm, or rather I should say apathy, rests on their huge faces, which have looked stolidly on many a change in Korea, but on none greater than the last year had witnessed.