During the subsequent occupation the Japanese troops behaved well, and all stores obtained in the town and neighborhood were scrupulously paid for. Intensely as the people hated them, they admitted that quiet and good order had been preserved, and they were very apprehensive that on their withdrawal they would suffer much from the _Kun-ren-tai_, a regiment of Koreans drilled and armed by the Japanese, and these had already begun to rob and beat the people, and to defy the civil authorities. The main street on my second visit had assumed a bustling appearance. There was much building up and pulling down, for Japanese traders had obtained all the eligible business sites, and were transforming the small, dark, low, Korean shops into large, light, airy, dainty Japanese erections, well stocked with Japanese goods, and specially with kerosene lamps of every pattern and price, the Defries and Hinckes patents being unblushingly infringed. Phyöng-yang has a truly beautiful situation on the right or north bank of the clear, bright Tai-döng, 400 yards wide at the ferry. It occupies an undulating plateau, and its wall, parallel for two miles and a half, rises from the river level at the stately Water Gate, and following its windings, mounts escarped hills to a height of over 400 feet, turning westwards at the crest of the cliff at a sharp angle marked by a pavilion, one of several, and follows the western ridge of the plateau, where it falls steeply down to a fertile rolling plain where the one real battle of the late war was fought. This wall, which is in excellent repair, is a loopholed and battlemented structure, 20 feet high, pierced by several gates with gate towers. The city, large as it was, was once much larger, for the old wall on the west side encloses a far larger area than the modern one. The walk over the grassy undulations within the wall and up to the northern pine-clothed summit is entrancing, and the views, even in winter, are exquisite--eastwards over a rich plain to the mountains through which the Tai-döng cuts its way, or northwest to one of its affluents and the great battlefield over which in 1593 the joint forces of Chinese and Koreans poured to recover Phyöng-yang from the Japanese, or seawards where the clear bright waters wind through fertile and populous country, or the hilly area within the walls where pine-clothed knolls conceal the devastations, and the Governor’s _yamen_, temples, and monasteries make a goodly show.