They found the land inhabited, but by a people strange in almost every particular. The explicitness with which all native accounts describe the people whom Ki-jun found in the south is in itself a striking argument in favor of the theory that a different race of people was there encountered. The southern part of the peninsula was divided between three groups of peoples called respectively Ma-han, Chin-han and Pyön-han. How these names originated can hardly be learned at this date, but it would seem that they were native words; for the last of the three, Pyön-han, was also called Pyön-jin, a word entering into the composition of many of the names of the towns peopled by the Pyön-han tribes. It is necessary for us now to take a brief glance at each of these three groups, for in them we shall find the solution of the most interesting and important problem that Korea has to offer either to the historian or ethnologist. The Ma-han people occupied the south-western part of the peninsula, comprising the whole of the present province of Ch’ung-ch’ŭng and the northern part of Chŭl-la. It may have extended northward nearly to the Han river but of this we cannot be sure. On its north was the tribe of Nang-nang, on the south was probably a part of Pyön-han but one authority says that to the south of Ma-han were the Japanese or Wă-in. These Japanese are carefully described and much color is given to this statement by certain coincidences which will be brought out later. No Korean work mentions these Japanese and it may be that the Japanese referred to were those living on the islands between Korea and Japan. But we can easily imagine the thrifty islanders making settlements of the southern coast of Korea. The first striking peculiarity of the Ma-han people, and one that differentiates them from the northern neighbors, was the fact that they were not one tribe but a congeries of small settlements each entirely independent of the others, each having its own chief, its own army, its own laws. It is said that they lived either among the mountains or along the coast, which would point to the existence of two races, the one inland, indigenous, and the other, colonists from some other country. The Ma-han people were acquainted with agriculture, sericulture and the use of flax and hemp. Their fowls had tails ninety-five inches long. Here is one of the interesting coincidences that uphold the contention that the Japanese were in the peninsula at that time. These peculiar fowls are now extinct, but, within the memory of people now living, such fowls were quite common in Japan and preserved specimens in the museum at Tokyo show that the above measurements are by no means unusual in that breed of fowl. It would seem then that Japan procured them from Korea, or else the Japanese colonists introduced them into Korea.