resent the meanness and bad manners
of the commercial classes, if his pony is honoured by being sat upon by a
nobleman! Such is the world even in Cho-sen. The _Mapu_ will sing to you,
and crack jokes, and again will swear at you and your servants, and at
nearly every _Mapu_ that goes by. The greater the gentleman his beast is
carrying, the more quarrelsome is he with everybody. The road, wide
though it be, seems to belong solely to him. He is in constant trouble
with citizens and the police, and it is generally on account of his
insignificance, poverty, and ignorance that so many of his evil doings
and wrongs are forgiven. None the less it must be said for them that they
take fairly good care of their minuscule quadrupeds. They feed them,
usually three times a day, with boiled chopped straw and beans, and grass
in summer-time, and with this diet you see the little brutes, which are
only about 10 hands high, and even less sometimes, go twenty-five or
thirty miles a day quite easily, with a weight of a couple of hundred
pounds on their backs, quickly toddling along without stopping, unless it
be to administer a sound kick to some bystander or to bite the legs of
the rider. These ponies have a funny little way of getting from under
you, if you ride them with an English saddle. They bend their legs till
they see you firmly planted on the ground, and then quickly withdraw
backwards leaving you, with your legs wide apart and standing like a
fool, to meditate on equine wickedness in the Realm of the Morning Calm.
They are indeed the trickiest little devils for their size I have ever
seen; and for viciousness and love of fighting, I can recommend you to no
steed more capable of showing these qualities. The average price of an
animal as above described varies from the large sum of five shillings to
as much as thirty shillings (at the rate of two shillings per Mexican
dollar), the price of course varying, as with us, according to the breed,
age, training, condition, &c., of the animal.

These ponies are much used all over the kingdom, for good roads for wheel
traffic hardly exist in the country, and wide horse-tracks form
practically the whole means of communication between the capital and the
most important ports and cities in the different provinces of Corea. They
are used both for riding purposes and as pack-ponies, "for light articles
only," like the racks in our railway carriages, but when heavy loads are
to be conveyed from