without something hot. The descent of An-kil Yung is very grand. The road leads into a wide valley with a fine stream, one side of which looks as if the mountains had dumped down all their available stones upon it, while the other is rich alluvial soil. Gold washing is carried on to a great extent along this stream, which is a tributary of the Tai-döng, and some of the workings show more care and method than usual, being pits neatly lined with stone in their upper parts. Eighty cents per day is the average earning of a gold-seeker there. This valley terminates in pretty, broken country, with fine mountain views, and picturesque cliffs along the river, on which the dark blue gloom of pines was lighted by the fading scarlet of the maple, and crimson streaks of the _Ampelopsis Veitchii_ brightened the russet into which the countless trailers which draped the rocks had passed. The increased fertility of the soil was denoted by the number of villages and hamlets on the road, and foot passengers in twos and threes gave something of life and movement. But it was remarkable that so soon after the harvest, and when the roads were in their best condition, there were no goods in transit except such local productions as paper and tobacco--no strings of porters or ponies carrying goods into the interior from Phyöng-yang, no evidence of trade but that given by the pedlars going the round of the market-places. Along that road and elsewhere near the villages there are tall poles branching at the top into a V, which are erected in the belief that they will guard the inhabitants from cholera and other pestilences. On that day’s journey, at a crossroad, a small log with several holes like those of a mouse-trap, one of them plugged doubly with bungs of wood, was lying on the path, and the _mapu_ were careful to step over it and lead their ponies over it, though it might easily have been avoided. Into the bunged hole the _mu-tang_ or sorceress by her arts had inveigled a dæmon which was causing sickness in a family, and had corked him up! It is proper for passers-by to step over the log. At nightfall it is buried. That afternoon’s ride was through extremely attractive country--small valley basins of rich stoneless soil, with brown hamlets nestling round them in calm, pine-sheltered folds of hills, which though not high are shapely, and were etherealized into purple beauty by the sinking sun, which turned the lake-like expanse of the Tai-döng at Mon-chin Tai, the beautifully situated halting-place for the night, into a sheet of gold.