The third day’s journey began under a grey and uncertain-looking sky, but the sun shone out at intervals as we made our way along the seashore. My guide insisted I should ride with a foot on each side of my good beast’s neck, but that brought disaster, for it meant nothing to cling to, so a sudden spring forward of the beast, resultant on an unseen prod in the back, landed me promptly in the dust. My mapoo tried to break the fall, but only succeeded in getting a blow on his mouth. Seeing I was not seriously damaged he made a pitiable appeal to my sympathy, opening a wide mouth in which I expected to see several teeth lying about. There was no sign of disaster except a few drops of blood, which seemed to distress him acutely, but the other men all roared with laughter and told him to wash in the stream close by. He didn’t cease being sorry for himself for quite a long while, and the weird songs with which he had previously beguiled the road ceased for half a day. We passed many small fishing hamlets, and were interested to see what a variety of fish the women had in their baskets, of which many were unknown to us. Flounders seem quite common, and in Seoul we noticed much larger herrings than any seen at home; all fish is much more expensive there than in London, owing to the Japanese monopoly, but happily for the little villages, they are so far beyond the beat of the foreigner that they are left unmolested; indeed we saw no Japanese after leaving Wonsan till that afternoon, when we were astonished at the sound of a siren, and turning a corner came into an exquisite little land-locked harbour, evidently a naval base, and completely concealed from the sea. Numbers of sea-gulls and oyster-catchers were disporting themselves in the shallow basin leading from it, but our attention was riveted on the boats where gun practice was going on, though it sounded muffled.