No land surpasses Korea in its abundance of local tales. Every hill, valley, conspicuous rock, stream and pool of water has its story. Every miriok of prominence in the country has traditions associated with it. The one most commonly told of this great miriok runs as follows: A country man who had been to the capital, returning to his home passed this great stone figure. He noticed a pear tree growing from the head, which bore several fine pears. The thought occurred to him to carry one of these to his village as a present for the magistrate. With infinite difficulty he climbed up the smooth surface of the figure,—the magnitude of the achievement will be evident from an inspection of the picture. When he reached the face and climbed over the lips he hesitated as to whether to pass up through the nostril,—a foolish procedure as it was a blind passage,—or climb around the nose. He decided upon the former method and proceeded to worm his way into the opening. He experienced a mighty shock and, when he came to himself, found that he was lying on the ground. His presence in the nostril had irritated the figure which had sneezed, thus throwing him to the earth. Ruefully rubbing his bruises, he looked upward at the figure regretful for his lost effort. But he had after all been fortunate and the same sneeze which had dislodged him had shaken one of the pears from the tree and it had fallen on the grass near by. Picking it up he hastened on his way rejoicing. The second item connected with this period to which I wish to refer is the cutting of wood-blocks for printing the entire Buddhist scriptures. The set of blocks is still preserved in the ancient monastery of Hain-sa. They were made during the reign of King Kojong and are seven hundred years old. There are eighty-one thousand of these blocks and each of them prints an entire page of a Buddhist text. Altogether they print six thousand eight hundred and five volumes, one thousand five hundred and eleven different works. A special building is devoted to their preservation and they have been taken over by the Japanese government as National Treasure. (Plates XII, XIII.) The blocks are said to represent the work of monks through fifteen years and the set is reputed the best in the world. Several years ago Count General Terauchi ordered several copies of the Tripitaka printed from these blocks. One of these copies was presented to the Emperor and a second is preserved in the temple, Senyu-ji, Kyoto. [Illustration: PLATE X Great Miriok: Eunjin. General view [Page 24]]