The population of the Han valley is not poor, if by poverty is to be understood scarcity of the necessaries of life. The people have enough for themselves and for all and sundry who, according to Korean custom, may claim their hospitality. Probably they are all in debt; it is very rare indeed to find a Korean who has not this millstone round his neck, and they are destitute of money or possessions other than those they absolutely require. They appear lazy. I then thought them so, but they live under a _régime_ under which they have no security for the gains of labor, and for a man to be reported to be “making money,” or attaining even the luxury of a brass dinner service, would be simply to lay himself open to the rapacious attentions of the nearest mandarin and his myrmidons, or to a demand for a loan from an adjacent _yang-ban_. Nevertheless, the homesteads of the Han valley have a look of substantial comfort. Certainly the meals of the _men_ are taken in far greater tidiness than is usual among laborers. The women, as is the fashion with women, eat “anyhow,” and gobble up their lords’ leavings. All meals for men are served on small, circular, dark wooden tables, a few inches high, one for each person. Rice is the staple of diet, and is served in a great bowl, but besides this, there are seldom fewer than five or six glazed earthenware vessels containing savory, or rather tasty, condiments.[15] Chop-sticks and small flattish spoons of horn or base metal are used for eating. In the villages, as distinguished from the hamlets, on the Han there are schools, but they are not open to the public. Families club together and engage a teacher, but the pupils are only of the scholarly class, and only Chinese learning in Wenli is taught, this being the stepping-stone to official position, the object of the ambition of every Korean. _En-mun_ is despised, and is not used as a written language by the educated class. I observed, however, that a great many men of the lower orders on the river were able to read their own script. With the exception of two small Buddhist establishments not far from Seoul, priests are non-existent on the Han, nor is there any Christian propaganda, Protestant or Roman, at work, though Roman missionaries were formerly stationed at two points near the forks. Dæmon-worship prevails throughout the whole region. The river is frozen for from three to four months in the winter, and tends to inundate the lower lands for two months in the summer. The bridle tracks which skirt it and diverge from it are infamous. The valley has no mails, and of course no newspapers. The Tong-haks (rebels, or armed reformers) were strong in a region immediately to the south of the great bend, which showed some dissatisfaction with things as they were, and a desire for reform in some minds.