Ta-rai, a neat, prosperous place of 240 people, among orchards, and hillsides terraced and bearing superb crops, is an example of the riverine villages. Its houses are built step above step along the sides of a ravine, down which a perennial stream flows, affording water power for an automatic rice hulling machine. For exports and imports the Han at high water is a cheap and convenient highway. The hill slopes above the village, with their rich soil, afford space for agricultural expansion for years to come. And not to dwell altogether on the material, there is a shrine of much repute on a fork-like slope near the river. It contains a group of _mirioks_, in this case stones worn by the action of water into the semblance of human beings. The central figure, larger than life, may even to a dull imagination represent a person carrying an infant, and its eyes, nose, and mouth are touched in with China ink. It is surrounded by Phallic symbols and _mirioks_, which may be supposed to represent children, and women make prayers and offerings in this shrine in the hope of obtaining a much coveted increase in their families, for male children are still regarded as a blessing in Korea, and “happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.” Ka-phyöng again, a small prefectural town of 400 houses 1¹⁄₂ miles from the river, is a good specimen of the small towns of the Han valley, with a ruinous _yamen_, of course, with its non-producing mob of hangers-on. It is on the verge of an alluvial plain, rolling up to picturesque hills, gashed by valleys, abounding in hamlets surrounded by chestnut groves and careful cultivation. The slopes above Ka-phyöng break up into knolls richly wooded with conifers and hard-wood trees, fringing off into clumps and groups which would not do discredit to the slopes of Windsor. The people of a large district bring their produce into the town, and barter it for goods in the market. The telegraph wire to Wön-san crosses the affluent on which Ka-phyöng is built, and is carried along a bridle path which for some _li_ runs along the river bank. Junks loaded 10 feet above their gunwales, as well as 4 feet outside of them with firewood, and large rafts were waiting for the water to rise. Boats were being built and great quantities of the strong rope used for towing and other purposes, which is made from a “creeper” which grows profusely in Central Korea, were awaiting water carriage. Yet Ka-phyöng, like other small Korean towns, has no life or go. Its “merchants” are but pedlars, its commercial ideas do not rise above those of the huckster, and though poverty, as we understand it, is unknown, prosperity as we understand it is absent. There are no special industries in any of the riverine towns, and if they were all to disappear in some catastrophe it would not cause a ripple on the surface of the general commercial apathy of the country.