The scenery, though always pretty, becomes monotonous after a few days, and monotonous too were the adventures in the rapids, which were innumerable, and the ceaseless toiling, dragging, and tugging they involved. Reaching Won-chön, a post station on the road to Wön-san, we halted and engaged horses for a land journey, at a very high rate, but they and their _mapu_ or grooms turned out well, and as Wong sententiously remarked, “If you pay well, you will be served well.” The agreement, which I caused to be put into writing, and which I made use of in other journeys, with much mutual satisfaction, was duly signed, and we continued the boat journey. After spending half a day at the prefectural town of Nang-chhön, where I am glad to record that the officials were very courteous, we ascended the Han to a point above the wild hamlet of Ut-Kiri, on a severe rapid full of jagged rocks. Ut-Kiri is above the head of low water navigation, but in two summer months during the rains small boats can reach Ku-mu-nio, “the last village,” 20 _li_ higher. It was a wild termination of the long boat journey. An abrupt turn of the river, and its monotonous prettiness is left behind, and there is a superb mountain view of saddleback ridges and lofty gray peaks surrounding a dark expanse of water, with a margin of gray boulders and needles of gray rock draped with the _Ampelopsis_, a yellow clematis, and a white honeysuckle. It was somewhat sad not to be able to penetrate the grim austerity to the northward, but the rapids were so severe and the water ofttimes so shallow that it was impossible to drag the _sampan_ farther, though at that time she only drew 2 inches of water. From Ma-chai on the forks she had been poled and dragged up forty rapids, making eighty-six on the whole journey. From the thinly peopled solitudes of these upper waters we descended rapidly, though not without some severe bumps, to the populous river banks, where villages are half hidden among orchards and chestnut and mulberry groves, and the crops are heavy, and that abundance of the necessaries of life which in Korea passes for prosperity is the rule.