. The whole thing
has an unpleasant brownish colour, and the smell of it reminded me much
of a photographer's dark room when collodion is in use, except that the
smell of the fish-salad is considerably stronger.

The Coreans excel and even surpass themselves in cooking rice. This is
almost an art with them, and the laurels for high achievements in it
belong to the women, for it is to them that work of this kind is
entrusted. Sometimes the Cho-senese make a kind of pastry, but they have
nothing at all resembling our bread. Rice takes the place of the last
mentioned, and though, so far as I could see, the fair ladies of Cho-sen
were somewhat casual in the exercise of the culinary art, they really
took enormous trouble to boil the rice properly. It is first well washed
in a large pail, and properly cleaned; then it undergoes a process of
slow boiling in plenty of water in such a way that, while quite soft and
delicious to the taste, each grain retains its shape and remains
separate, instead of making the kind of paste produced by our method of
boiling it. The whitish water left behind after the rice has been removed
is, as we have seen, used as a cooling beverage. In some respects the
Corean diet approaches the Chinese and the Indian, rather than the
Japanese; for many a time have I seen men in Corea eat their rice mixed
with meat and fish, well covered with strong sauce, in the shape of a
_curry_; whereas in Japan the boiled rice is always in a bowl apart and
eaten separately.

The Corean mind seems to lay great stress upon the quantity of food that
the digestive organs will bear. Nothing gives more satisfaction to a
Corean than to be able to pat his tightly-stretched stomach, and, with a
deep sigh of relief, say: "Oh, how much I have eaten!" Life, according to
them, would not be worth living if it were not for eating. Brought up
under a regime of this kind, it is not astonishing that their capacity
for food is really amazing. I have seen a Corean devour a luncheon of a
size that would satisfy three average Europeans, and yet after that, when
I was anxiously expecting to see him burst, fall upon a large dish of
dried persimmons, the heaviest and most indigestible things in existence.
"They look very good," said he, as he quickly swallowed one, and with his
supple fingers undid the beautiful bow of his girdle and loosened it,
thus apparently providing for more space inside. "I shall eat one or
two," he murmured, as he was