832
Japanese town, but the rest of Seoul is com- posed of huts and hovels, from end to end of the city. They are not all made of mats alone; some are of mud, with lumps of uncut stone embedded in it; and some of the roofs are of tile, very rough and poor. And the Corean shops are correspondingly wretched little things. Shopkeeping is mostly done by Chinese and Japanese; and as far as I can see, all skilled labour is Chinese or Japanese too. At any rate, if you hear B sound of sawing wood, of chipping stone, of hammering nails, the whirr of a sewing machine, uhy noise of active labour, and if you go to see. you usually find it is not a Corean at work! They seem generally to do little else but fetch and carry, talk, and look on,
To some readers, the recital of the manifold uncleanliness of the Coreans will seem horrible and disgusting, and some may think such things would be better unwritten. But there is need that these things should be known and understood, not merely as showing the desira | bility of some strong Power taking this country in hand, but for the additional reason that the conditions may have an important influence on the actual course of the present war. Seoul is a breeding ground of epidemic diseases. Every year Corea loses many thousands of lives by epidemics, and there has practically never been anything done to prevent them. Seoul usually has the largest death-roll because it is the largest dirt-hole. The civilised world is greatly concerned when a few hundred people are re- moved quickly and almost painlessly by being shot, or blown up, or bludgeoned, or drowned; it is something that interests people greatly, I think it is a matter of greater concern when many thousanda die, not in a flash of a moment. but gradually and with awful sufferings, in the agonies of cholera and other scourges.
The Corean official records show that there were over 370,000 deaths from cholera in 1786. including 60,000 in Seoul: the Crown Prince was one of the victims. Thirteen years later there was another epidemic, of a kind not quite clear, but it may have been the black plague." In 1815 the land was ravaged by a kind of typhus, and 1821 saw one of the worst visitations of cholera ever known. In Seoul alone, ten thousand people died in ten days, and the disease extended its ravages into the following year. Then in 1832 began a series of famines and epidemics, chiefly cholera. continuing uninterrupted for nine years. Typhus again swept over Seoul in 1833, and there are men now living who remember see- ing the corpses piled in thousands just inside the South Gate, awaiting interment. The people, desperate with hunger and suffering, be- came riotous, and stormed the Government granaries, but found that all the grain supposed to be stored against famine had been stolen by
the officials. The Prime Minister was chiefly responsible, and had to fly for his life, hiding for months in the provinces. This brings the terrible record down to the present generation, which has been much the same. Ten years ago, the Japanese army fighting against the Chinese in Corea had an immense sick-list, and lost ten times as many lives by Corean epidemics as by Chinese bullets.
|
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
(May 2, 1904 ordered about. I think their predominant carry about 80 wires, for there is a lot of new characteristic, even more than apathy, is a craving to be dominated, influenced, even bullied. and telephone-poles. The gang would raise the work being done in Seoul now, erecting telegraph Their apathy is only the sprawling of a "scarlet-end of the pole a foot or two, prop it, and rest runner where nobody has provided it with a a few minutes. By the time they had it nearly pole. They need someone to direct them, and upright, with the foot of the pole resting on the they seem the most willing people in the world. edge of the pit dug to receive it, they found the They only lack a backbone of their own, and pit was too narrow, and it took about ten they seem only too willing to lean on anyone. minutes to widen it an inch or two. The order When Marquis Ito was known to be coming had been issued that all these poles, which have to Seoul, there was a sudden rush (if such a been lying along the roadsides for a long time, thing is possible among Coreans) to cleanse must be up in time for Marquis Ito to see; the Augean stables. The effort was weak and but it was only possible in the time to get about ludicrous, but it has shown a good disposition, a tenth of them erected. and an augury for better performance in future. First, when the Seoul authorities were formally notified that the Marquis would come, as a very special messenger from Emperor to Emperor, it was unofficially hinted that the streets along which the distinguished visitor would pass were not quite a credit to the nation. So the By the way, one of the commonest sights in Corean authorities very readily promised to Seoul would afford English working-men food have things cleaned up a bit, but they did not for thought. Twenty Corean labourers with get to work on the execution of the promise picks are set to dig up a bad piece of road; they till two days before Marquis Ito's arrival. have a rigid rule among themselves that no Then proclamations were posted all over the man must work faster than another, “and city, telling the people that the streets when one stops to moisten his hands for a fresh were disgraceful and must be cleaned. It hold of the pick, all stop; and the multiplied is characteristic that the proclamation was delays make the work go more slowly printed on plain slips of common paper. with than in any other country I have ever no official_heading. no Government seal Reel. All picks rise simultaneously, then nor Imperial coat of arms, no distinguishing each man slowly looks round to see how mark at all. It has, in fact, neither heading the rest are getting
оп. Then the picks, nor signature. Translated. it reads about as poised aloft for several seconds, cautionsly follows:- Dirt is disgraceful. therefore all commence the down-stroke, but nobody dare let householders must clear their street-fronts and
his weapon
come down smartly, for fear he gutters by the 18th of March. This is an official should get himself disliked for spoiling the unison proclamation which must be obeyed or there will of the performance. The coolies are not quite be penalties. That is all. And the Coreans clever enough to make all the picks clink gathered in wondering crowds, staring at the exactly together, and so at the sound every man placard on the wall, and hazarding guesses what has to look at every other, to notice which one it might be about, till some clever man came was out of time. The resulting slowness is along who could read. He would spell it out such as "passeth all understanding." aloud. laboriously, and interrupt himself at intervals with a running fire of comment, and the rest would listen and sometimes all talk at once. They are great talkers, and their language is one of those that use up a large number of words to express any idea. Ten words of English need fifty of Corean.
Still, it is important to note the willingness shown by the Corean officials to do whatever 1 they thought the Japanese would wish. Their intentions seem to be all right, and with patience and plenty of time all will be well with Corea under the Japanese stimulus.
There is a similar ratio of words to deeds. If there are to be ten men working there must be fifty to look on and talk. That is how the cleansing of the city proceeded. A spade. for instance. takes five men to handle it; one is captain, and holds the spade, while two have ropes tied to it and help to tow the spade through the soil, and the other two men are to look on, and take alternate spells at pulling the ropes. This is the way fields are tilled, and it is the way the garbage is being scratched up in the streets of the metropolis. The spade blade is about the size of a drawing-room coal- shovel. and some spades have a crew of seven men. Out of curiosity I timed one crew of six; they lifted into a basket about two cubic feet of rubbish in twenty minutes. About every five minutes all hands would knock off work to discuss the weather, or the futility of human effort, and to give their nether garments another hitoh. Seldom can you see half a dozen Coreans together but at least one of them at any given moment must be hitching up his trousers and readjusting his waistband, for these people tie themselves together so negligently that they never stay tied long.
Just now, with chilly days and freezing nights, germ-life is comparatively inactive, but the warm weather is close at hand, and will bring out the danger now dormant. Seoul lives on the surface of a stratum of ancient and modern filth that must be yards deep. In the vast majority of the houses there is no attempt at sanitation in any shape; but merely by usage, one corner of the mud floor come to be recognised as the general latrine, and the sewage is left to meander out through a hole in the wall, at the floor level. Some few houses attain the distinction of establishing a cesspool just outside, but in most cases the bare ground is cesspool enough. The reader may think such conditions prevail only among the very lowest and poorest people who have no chance to manage better. In all countries there are ex- treme depths of poverty, here and there un- In front of the Emperor's palace I saw 37 avoidably associated with squalor and filth. But men lift one telegraph pole, while nearly 100 in Corea it is general. Dirty habits and dis-workmen looked on. It was supposed to be a gusting indolence characterise even the highest
classes.
Yet there is much hope, if they are taken in hand, for they readily respond to external influence. In fact, they seem eager to be
These gangs of coolies have been working in various parts of the city. listlessly digging up the dirt from roadside ditches and piling it in heaps on the roadway. It was quite a long time before they reached the next stage, the removal of the heaps, and by that time a good deal of the stuff had slipped back to where it came from. It is of the blue-black slimy sort, with an effluvium strong enough to stopa olock. The workmen carefully stacked this in mounds at the street corners in time for the arrival of Marquis Ito, and no doubt he regarded the heaps as emblematic decorations, suggesting "The old order changeth, giving place to new."
+9
gang of 150, and they had a lot of poles to place in position, but the whole gang kept to one pole at a time, and took nearly an hour at it. It was a big pole, certainly, two feet thick at the base, with a heavy top piece to
80
Reverting to the subject of epidemics, there is another crying evil that helps to make Coren a plague spot; in all the country there is no such thing as waterworks. Surface-wells, visibly fouled by surface-sewage, are the main source of water-supply in the city, for the river is too far. In the Japanese quarter the wells go deeper and are kept pretty clear of drainage. But as a rule no Corean would take the trouble to dig a well ten feet deep if he found any water at five feet, and no such thing as a filter is ever dreamed of in their philosophy. Tea-drinking and the boiling of the water would no doubt do much to lessen the danger, but that the water is seldom made to really boil, and the poorer classes cannot afford to drink tea always. So death stalks over the land, and plucky little Japan will have to fight a greater foe than the Rus- sian arms.
HONGKONG
GENERAL
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.
ANNUAL MEETING.
The annual meeting of members of the Hong- kong General Chamber of Commerce was held on the 27th ult. in the Chamber of Commerce, City Hall. Mr. E. A. Hewett (chairman) presided, and there were also present Messrs. D. R. Law (vice-chairman), J. R. M. Smith, R. C. Wilcox, A. G. Wood, N. A. Siebs, A. Haupt, and H. E. Tomkins (committee), Mr. A. R. Lowe (secretary). Messrs. A Forbes, T. Cochrane, W. B. Dixon, A. 8. Mihara, E. W. Mitchell, E. H. Hinds. G. W. F. Playfair, W. D. Graham, J. R. Michael, A. Marty, Murray Stewart, O. I. Ellis, G. Currie, E. Ormiston, E. 8. Whealler, C. H. Thompson, W. Danby, H. Wicking, A. J. Raymond, G. C. Moxon, J. J. Leiria, H. P. White, D. E. Brown, W. 8. Harrison, C. A. Tomes, H. Skott, and G. de Champeaux.
The SECRETARY having read the notice calling the meeting,
The CHAIRMAN said-Gentlemen,--The first business is a purely formal one-to confirm the report of the last annual meeting, 1903, and the report of a special meeting held on 12th August, 1903, with regard to the election of a repre- sentative of the Chamber of Commerce on the Legislative Council. The minutes of these meetings were published at the time and I take it you will hold them as read. I beg to move- that these be confirmed.
ท