The island of Quelpart, or as Rev. W. E. Griffis, D.D. in his book on Korea calls it—the Sicily of Korea, or as Koreans call it, Chai-joo, is the largest island of the Korean archipelago and is situated south of the peninsula at a distance of some fifty miles from the mainland. The shape of the island is elliptical, and straight lines drawn between the two farthest and two nearest points thro the center would be forty and seventeen miles long. As you approach the island from the north at a distance of twenty miles it looks like an isosceles, the two sides rising at an angle of about seventeen degrees and only near the top turning a little steeper—something like Namsan as you look at it from the north gate of Seoul. The island rises gradually all round from the edges toward the center where the foot of Mount Auckland, or Hal-la-san, is planted. All over the island are scattered small conical hills, which look very insignificant before the cloudy peak of Hal-la-san rising to the height of 6,558 feet. The origin of the island is decidedly volcanic, the mountain being most probably an extinct volcano. The flow of lava was toward the north and south-southwest, the streams being, the first, some twenty miles wide along the coast of the island and the second, some thirty miles. Thus the lava covered two-fifths of the whole area of the island. This part of it is very stony and very difficult to cultivate and gigantic labor must have been spent in trying to clear the fields of the innumerable stones. Often on a field of one acre there will be four or five piles of stone eight or ten feet high. Another way of disposing of these stones was to build walls between the fields, so that from the top of one of the small hills the land seems to be covered with a large irregular net. The other three-fifths of the island are almost free from stones and the soil is black and rich. The mountain slopes gradually towards the east and the west, but comes down abruptly in deep ravines towards the south and especially towards the north.