I spent two days at Tok Chhön. Properly speaking, the Tai-döng is never navigable to that point, owing to many and dangerous rapids, and any idea of the possibility of this highly picturesque stream becoming “a great commercial highway” may be utterly dismissed. Small boats can ascend it at all seasons to Mou-chin Tai, about 140 _li_ lower down, and during two summer months, when the water is high, a few with much difficulty get up to Tok Chhön, and even a few _li_ farther, and at the same season rafts descend from the forests of the Yung-wön district, from 30 to 40 _li_ higher; but owing to severe rapids, shallows, and sandbanks which shift continually, the river is not really navigable higher than Phyöng-yang, and all commercial theories built upon it are totally chimerical. For 30 _li_ above Tok Chhön the river scenery is far grander than below, the perpendicular walls of limestone rock rising from 800 to 1,000 feet, with lofty mountains above them, the peaks of which, even so early as the end of November, were crested with new-fallen snow. I had been assured in Phyöng-yang that boats could be hired at Tok Chhön, and I had planned to descend the river; but there are no boats, except a few ferry scows, higher than Mou-chin Tai. Tok Chhön and its district are lamentably poor. The people said that the war had made the necessaries of life dearer, and that they had only the same produce to barter or buy with. The reforms which were being carried out farther south had not reached that region, and “squeezing” was still carried on by the officials. Rice, the ordinary staff of Korean life, is brought from An Ju, but is used only by the rich, _i.e._ the officials. The poor live on large and small millet. Potatoes and wheat are grown, but the soil is poor and stony. A little trade, chiefly in dried fish and seaweed, is done with Wön-san. A few silk lenos and gauzes of very poor quality are made, the industry having been introduced by the Chinese. Piece goods are only a few _cash_ dearer than at Phyöng-yang. Those displayed on the market-day were nearly all Japanese. It was the dullest market I have seen. The pedlars carried away nearly as much as they brought. The country is absolutely denuded of wood. There are no deciduous trees, and the region owes its few groves of dwarfed and distorted pines to the horseshoe graves on the hillsides. A _yamen_ which only hangs together from force of habit, a Confucian temple, and a Buddhist temple on a height are the only noteworthy buildings. The district magistrate returned while I was in Tok Chhön, and the people showed a degree of interest in the event. Runners lined the river bank by the ferry, blowing horns, forty men in black gauze coats over their white ones, and a few singing girls met his chair and ran with it to the _yamen_, and a few men looked on apathetically. A more squalid retinue could not be imagined.