Among the modes of squeezing are forced labor, doubling or trebling the amount of a legitimate tax, exacting bribes in cases of litigation, forced loans, etc. If a man is reported to have saved a little money, an official asks for the loan of it. If it is granted, the lender frequently never sees principal or interest; if it is refused, he is arrested, thrown into prison on some charge invented for his destruction, and beaten until either he or his relations for him produce the sum demanded. To such an extent are these demands carried, that in Northern Korea, Where the winters are fairly severe, the peasants, when the harvest has left them with a few thousand _cash_, put them in a hole in the ground, and pour water into it, the frozen mass which results then being earthed over, when it is fairly safe both from officials and thieves. CHAPTER XXIX SOCIAL POSITION OF WOMEN Mou-chin Tai is a beautifully situated village, and has something of a look of comfort. Up to that point small boats can come up at all seasons, but there is almost no trade. The Tai-döng expands into a broad sheet of water, on which the hills descend abruptly. There is a ferry, and we drove our ponies into the ferryboat and yelled for the ferryman. After a time he appeared on the top of the bank, but absolutely declined to take us over “for any money.” He would have “nothing so do with a foreigner,” he said, and he would not be “implicated with a Japanese”! So we put ourselves across, and the _mapu_ were so angry that they threw his poles into the river. Passing through very pretty country, and twice crossing the Tai-döng, we halted at the town of Sun-chhön, a magistracy with a deplorably ruinous _yamen_. All these official buildings have seen better days. Their courts are spacious, and the double-roofed gateways, with their drum towers, as well as the central hall of the _yamen_, still retain a certain look of stateliness, though paint, lacquer, and gilding have long ago disappeared from the elaborately arranged beams and carved wood of the roofs, and the fretwork screening the interiors is always shabby and broken. About the Sun-chhön _yamen_, and all others, there are crowds of “runners,” writers, soldiers in coarse ragged uniforms, young men of the _yang-ban_ class in spotless white garments, lounging, or walking with the swinging gait befitting their position, while the decayed and forlorn rooms in the courtyard are filled with petty officials, smoking long pipes and playing cards. To judge from the crowds of attendants, the walking hither and thither, the hurrying in various directions with manuscripts, and the din of drums and fifes when the great gate is opened and closed, one would think that nothing less than the business of an empire was transacted within the ruinous portals.