Some magistrates had a thousand of such retainers paid by this impoverished country. In a single province, there were at that time 44 district mandarins, with an average staff of 400 men each, whose sole duties were those of police and tax-collecting, their food alone, at the rate of two dollars per month, costing $392,400 a year.[38] This army of 17,600 men, not receiving a “living wage,” “squeezed” on its own account the peasant, who in Korea has neither rights nor privileges, except that of being the ultimate sponge. As an illustration of the methods of proceeding I give the case of a village in a southern province. Telegraph poles were required, and the Provincial Governor made a requisition of 100 _cash_ on every house. The local magistrate increased it to 200, and his runners to 250, which was actually paid by the people, the runners getting 50 _cash_, the magistrate 100, and the Governor 100, a portion of which sum was expended on the object for which it was levied. An edict abolishing this attendance, and reducing the salaries of magistrates, had recently been promulgated. At Tok Chhön, the ruin and decay of official buildings, and the filth and squalor of the private dwellings, could go no farther. FOOTNOTES: [38] My authority for this statement is Mr. W. K. Carles, formerly H.B.M.’s Vice-Consul in Korea. CHAPTER XXVIII OVER THE AN-KIL YUNG PASS Finding the Tai-döng totally impracticable, and being limited as to time by the approach of the closing of the river below Phyöng-yang by ice, I regretfully turned southwards, and journeyed Seoul-wards by another route, of much interest, which touches here and there the right bank of the Tai-döng. As I sat amidst the dirt, squalor, rubbish, and odd and endism of the inn yard before starting, surrounded by an apathetic, dirty, vacant-looking, open-mouthed crowd steeped in poverty, I felt Korea to be hopeless, helpless, pitiable, piteous, a mere shuttlecock of certain great powers, and that there is no hope for her population of twelve or fourteen millions, unless it is taken in hand by Russia, under whose rule, giving security for the gains of industry as well as light taxation, I had seen Koreans in hundreds transformed into energetic, thriving, peasant farmers in Eastern Siberia. The road, which was said, and truly, to be a very bad one, crosses a small plain, and passing under a roofed gateway between two hills which are scarred by remains of fortifications running east and west, enters upon really fine scenery, which becomes magnificent in about 30 _li_, at first a fertile mountain-girdled basin, whose rim is spotted with large villages, and then a narrowing valley with stony soil, and a sparse population, walled in by savage mountains of emphatic forms, swinging apart at times, and revealing loftier peaks and ranges then glittering with new-fallen snow. [Illustration: RUSSIAN OFFICERS, HUN-CHUN.]