Forty Japanese soldiers found a draughty shelter within the tumble-down buildings of the _yamen_. As I walked down the street one of them touched me on the shoulder, asking my nationality, whence I came, and whither I was going, not quite politely, I thought. When I reached my room a dozen of them came and gradually closed round my door, which I could not shut, standing almost within it. A trim sergeant raised his cap to me, and passing on to Mr. Yi’s room, asked him where I came from and whither I was going, and on hearing, replied, “All right,” raised his cap to me, and departed, withdrawing his men with him. This was one of several domiciliary visits, and though they were usually very politely made, they suggested the query as to the right to make them, and to whom the mastership in the land belonged. There, as elsewhere, though the people hated the Japanese with an intense hatred, they were obliged to admit that they were very quiet and paid for everything they got. If the soldiers had not been in European clothes, it would not have occurred to me to think them rude for crowding round my door. A day’s ride through monotonous country brought us to Pong-san, where we halted in the dirtiest hole I had till then been in. As soon as my den was comfortably warm, myriads of house flies, blackening the rafters, renewed a semi-torpid existence, dying in heaps in the soup and curry, filling the well of the candlestick with their singed bodies, and crawling in hundreds over my face. Next came the cockroaches in legions, large and small, torpid and active, followed by a great army of fleas and bugs, making life insupportable. To judge from the significant sounds from the public room, no one slept all night, and when I asked Mr. Yi after his welfare the next morning, he uttered the one word “miserable.” Discomforts of this nature, less or more, are inseparable from the Korean inn. The following day, at a large village, we came upon the weekly market. It is usual to inquire regarding the trade of a district, and as the result of my inquiries, I assert that “trade” in the ordinary sense has no existence in a great part of Central and Northern Korea, _i.e._ there is no exchange of commodities between one place and another, no exports, no imports by resident merchants, and no industries supplying more than a local demand. Such are to be found to some extent in Southern Korea, and specially in the province of Chul-la. Apart from Phyöng-yang, “trade” does not exist in the region through which I travelled.