Perhaps in this, however, I am not alone. The feeling
is in part, I think, due to one's new surroundings, though chiefly to the
facial expressions of the people, with which one is not familiar and
probably does not quite understand. One may be a student of human
character in only a very amateurish way, and yet without much difficulty
guess by the twinkle in the eye, or the quivering of the underlip,
whether a person is pleased or annoyed, but when a strange land is
visited one is apt to be at first often deceived by appearances; and if,
as has happened in my case, the traveller has suffered in consequence of
being thus deceived, he is rather apt to look upon all that he sees with
a considerable amount of caution and even suspicion.

It was then with some such feelings as these that I landed at Chemulpo.
Hundreds of coolies running along the shore, with loads of grain on their
backs, to be shipped by the _Higo-Maru_, had no compunction in knocking
you down if you were in their way, and a crowd of curious native loafers,
always ready to be entertained by any new arrival, followed you _en
masse_ wherever you went.

When I visited Chemulpo there were actually three European hotels there.
These were European more in name than in fact, but there they were, and
as the night was fast approaching, I had to make my choice, for I wanted
a lodging badly.

One of these hotels was kept by a Chinaman, and was called Steward's
Hotel, for the simple reason that its owner had been a steward on board
an American ship, and had since appropriated the word as a family name;
the second, which rejoiced in the grand name of "Hotel de Coree," was of
Hungarian proprietorship, and a favourite resort for sailors of
men-of-war when they called at that port, partly because a drinking
saloon, well provided with intoxicants of all descriptions, was the chief
feature of the establishment, and partly because glasses were handed over
the counter by a very fascinating young lady, daughter of the proprietor,
a most accomplished damsel, who could speak fluently every language under
the sun--from Turkish and Arabic to Corean and Japanese. The third
hotel--a noble mansion, to use modern phraseology--was quite a new
structure, and was owned by a Japanese. The name which had been given by
him to his house of rest was "The Dai butzu," or, in English parlance,
The Great God. Attracted by the holiness of the name, and perhaps even
more by the clean look, outside