ain, but never by any chance are they interfered with by the people. The
Coreans are extremely superstitious, and they are much afraid of the
dead. Metempsychosis is not an uncommon trait of their minds, especially
among the better classes; thus, for instance, the soul of the dead man is
sometimes supposed to enter the body of a bird, in which case the
relatives carefully build a semi-circular stone railing round the mound,
so that the winged successor of the deceased may have whereon to perch.

The grave of one of the richer people is especially noteworthy. First,
there is the mound in the centre as usual, but nearly twice the size of
that which covers a poorer person. Then there is a stone railing a little
way off; and between that and the mound stand in double rows, at the
sides, rough images of human beings and horses carved in stone. The
general rule is, in the case of a rich man, to have two men and two
ponies on either side and a small column at the end; while in the case of
a man not so much distinguished only a single horse and man respectively
are placed on either side. The short column with a slab at the top is
nearly always a feature. The stone images so placed are, as a rule, so
badly carved that, unless one is told what they are meant to represent,
it is really difficult to decide the point. The horses, especially, might
easily be mistaken for sheep, dogs, or any other animal, the small
stature of the native ponies being imitated in these images, to an
exaggerated degree. As for the stone human-shaped images, these are
usually made dressed in a long sort of gown and with the arms folded in
front and the head covered by a curled up skull-cap, of the kind worn by
Corean officials even at the present day, and formerly worn by all the
high officials in China, whence probably the fashion has been imported.

A curious feature which I often noticed about the graves of people who
had not been over well-off, and whose friends could not afford a large
number of statues or figures of men and animals, was this:--If only one
or two monuments were put up by the side of the mound, these invariably
consisted of representations either of two horses or else of a horse and
a ram, that is, if I am right in fixing the latter's identity by the
curled horns on the side of its head. If, on the other hand, the
monuments were more than two in number, the others were, just as
invariably, representations of human figures, the number o