p to Keijo, from walled city to walled city across a
snowy mountain land that was hollowed with innumerable fat farming
valleys. And every evening, at fall of day, beacon fires sprang from
peak to peak and ran along the land. Always Kim watched for this nightly
display. From all the coasts of Cho-Sen, Kim told me, these chains of
fire-speech ran to Keijo to carry their message to the Emperor. One
beacon meant the land was in peace. Two beacons meant revolt or
invasion. We never saw but one beacon. And ever, as we rode, Vandervoot
brought up the rear, wondering, "God in heaven, what now?"

Keijo we found a vast city where all the population, with the exception
of the nobles or yang-bans, dressed in the eternal white. This, Kim
explained, was an automatic determination and advertisement of caste.
Thus, at a glance, could one tell, the status of an individual by the
degrees of cleanness or of filthiness of his garments. It stood to
reason that a coolie, possessing but the clothes he stood up in, must be
extremely dirty. And to reason it stood that the individual in
immaculate white must possess many changes and command the labour of
laundresses to keep his changes immaculate. As for the yang-bans who
wore the pale, vari-coloured silks, they were beyond such common
yardstick of place.

After resting in an inn for several days, during which time we washed our
garments and repaired the ravages of shipwreck and travel, we were
summoned before the Emperor. In the great open space before the palace
wall were colossal stone dogs that looked more like tortoises. They
crouched on massive stone pedestals of twice the height of a tall man.
The walls of the palace were huge and of dressed stone. So thick were
these walls that they could defy a breach from the mightiest of cannon in
a year-long siege. The mere gateway was of the size of a palace in
itself, rising pagoda-like, in many retreating stories, each story
fringed with tile-roofing. A smart guard of soldiers turned out at the
gateway. These, Kim told me, were the Tiger Hunters of Pyeng-yang, the
fiercest and most terrible fighting men of which Cho-Sen could boast.

But enough. On mere description of the Emperor's palace a thousand pages
of my narrative could be worthily expended. Let it suffice that here we
knew power in all its material expression. Only a civilization deep and
wide and old and strong could produce this far-walled, many-gabled roof
of king