The great gate is approached by an avenue of trees, and the road is lined with _seun-tjeung-pi_, monuments to good governors and magistrates, faithful widows, and pious sons. A wide street, its apparent width narrowed by two rows of thatched booths, divides the city. It was a scene of bustle, activity, and petty trade, something like a fair. The women wear white sheets gathered round their heads and nearly reaching their feet. The street was thronged with men in huge hats and very white clothing, with boy bridegrooms in pink garments and the quaint yellow hats which custom enjoins for several months after marriage, and with mourners dressed in sackcloth from head to foot, the head and shoulders concealed by peaked and scalloped hats, the identity being further disguised by two-handled sackcloth screens, held up to their eyes. In thatched stalls on low stands and on mats on the ground were all Korean necessaries and luxuries, among which were large quantities of English piece goods, and hacked pieces of beef with the blood in it, Korean killed meat being enough to make any one a vegetarian. Goats are killed by pulling them to and fro in a narrow stream, which method is said to destroy the rank taste of the flesh; dogs by twirling them in a noose until they are unconscious, after which they are bled. I have already inflicted on my readers an account of the fate of a bullock at Korean hands. It was a busy, dirty, poor, mean scene under the hot sun. The Song-do inns are bad, and a friend of Mr. Yi kindly lent me a house, partly in ruins, but with two rooms which sheltered Im and myself, and in this I spent two pleasant days in lovely weather, Mr. Yi, who was visiting friends, escorting me to the Song-do sights, which may be seen in one morning, and to pay visits in some of the better-class houses. My quarters, though by comparison very comfortable, would not at home be considered fit for the housing of a better-class cow! But Korea has a heavenly climate for much of the year. The squalor, dust, and rubbish in my compound and everywhere were inconceivable, though the city is rather a “well-to-do” one. The water supply is atrocious, offal and refuse of all kinds lying up to the mouths of the wells. It says something for the security of Korea that a foreign lady could safely live in a dwelling up a lonely alley in the heart of a big city, with no attendant but a Korean soldier knowing not a word of English, who, had he been so minded, might have cut my throat and decamped with my money, of which he knew the whereabouts, neither my door nor the compound having any fastening!