ater-side. Finally, having arrived at the
river-side, after shouting for half an hour to the ferry boatman to come
and pick me up, I in due course landed on the other side. The river Han
makes a most wonderful detour between its estuary and this point. As the
river was left behind, more habitations in the shape of miserable and
filthy mud-huts, with thatched roofs, became visible; shops of eatables
and native low drinking places following one another in continuation; and
crowds of ponies, people, and oxen showed that the capital was now being
fast neared; and sure enough, after winding along the dirty, narrow road,
lined by the still dirtier mud huts for nearly the whole of the distance
between Mafu, the place where the Han river was ferried, and here, a
distance of about three miles, I found myself at last in front of the
West Gate of the walled city of Seoul.

I could hear quite plainly in the distance, from the centre of the town,
the slow sound of a bell; and men, women and children, on foot or riding,
were scrambling through the gate in both directions. As I stopped for a
moment to gaze upon the excited crowd, it suddenly flashed across my mind
that I had been told at Chemulpo, that to the mournful sound of what is
called the "Big bell" the heavy wooden gates lined with iron bars were
closed, and that no one was thereafter allowed to enter or go out of the
town. The sun was just casting his last glorious rays on the horizon, and
the excitement grew greater as the strokes of the bell became fainter
and fainter, and with the mad crowd of men and beasts mixed together upon
it, the road might be compared with the tide entering the mouth of a
running river. I threw myself into the thick of the in-going flow, and
with my feet trampled upon by passing ponies; now knocking against a
human being, now face to face with a bull, I finally managed to get
inside. Well do I remember the hoarse voices of the gate-keepers, as they
shouted out that time was up, and hurried the weary travellers within the
precincts of the royal city; well also do I recollect, as I stood
watching their doings from the inside, how they pushed back and
ill-treated, with words and kicks, the last people who passed through,
and then, out of patience, revolved the heavy gates on their huge and
rusty hinges, finally closing the city until sunrise next day. Shouts of
people, just too late, on the other side, begging to be let in, remained
unacknowledged, and