ith its numerous
buildings around it; the British Consulate with its new red brick house
in course of construction; and, by the side of the last mentioned, the
_compounds_ of the American and Russian legations. Farther on, nearer the
royal Palace, the German flag may be seen surmounting the German
Consulate, which is situated in an enclosure containing several Corean
houses which have been reduced _a l' Europeenne_ and made very
comfortable. Then the large house with a glass front is the one now
inhabited by the Vice-Minister for Home Affairs, but the grounds
surrounding this are very restricted. A nunnery and a few houses of
missionaries also stand prominent, mostly in the neighbourhood of the
Japanese settlement.

The Japanese settlement, into which we will now descend, is noteworthy
for the activity and commercial enterprise shown by the subjects of the
Mikado. It is remarkable, also, to notice the curious co-existence of
sense and nonsense in the Jap's adoption of foreign customs. For
instance, you see the generality of them dressed in European clothes, but
nevertheless still sticking to the ancient custom of removing their
boots on entering a house; a delightful practice, I agree, in Japan,
where the climate is mild, but not in a country like Corea, where you
have an average of sixty degrees of frost. Then again, the Japanese
houses, the outer walls of which consist of tissue paper, seem hardly
suited to such a climate as that of Corea. It is really comical to watch
them as they squat in a body round a brass brasier, shivering and blue
with cold, with thin flat faces and curved backs; reminding one very much
of the large family of quadrumans at the Zoo on a cold day. Nevertheless,
they are perfectly happy, though many die of pleurisy, consumption, and
cold in the chest.

The Japanese women dress, of course, in their national _kimonos_, and
just as it is in Japan the fashion to show a little of the chest under
the throat, so in Cho-sen the same custom is adopted; with the result
that many are carried off by bronchitis to the next world.

One cannot but admire the Japanese, however, for the cleanliness of their
houses and for the good-will--sometimes too much of it--which they
display as well in their commercial dealings as in their colonising
schemes. The custom of daily bathing in water of a boiling-point
temperature is carried on by them in Corea as in their own country,
notwithstanding which I venture to say t