ROBINSON
PIANO Co. LD,
$100
REDUCTION
os 11 UPRIGHT GRANDS
OF
IN COREA.
THE HONGKONG DAILY PRESS, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27TH, 1904.
(FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]
SEOUL-A STUPENDOUA CESSPOĆI..
Seoul. 16th April.
The streets of Soond are covered several feet thick with the accumulated dich of centuries, und now the Corean authorities have suddenly started trying to clean the place completely in a day or two. It hus dawned on then that they cught to assuns an appearance of modern civili. sation now, and make some show of emulating the Japanese. In fact, the Coreans are begin- ning to feel ashamed of their dirt in prosence of so many strangers. There have never been drains in Seoul. In several parts of the town old streamlets still survive, struggling down from the adjacent bills to the big river, struggling through huge superincumbent accumulations of rubbish and garbage, the deposit of centuries of lazy Efs. These poor little hillside streamlets | degenerate into a sort of substitute for drains, and they are in fact almost stagnant, almost waterless ditches of Bith. They might be calted drains, perhaps.
But generally speaking. Seoul is its about the condition one would expect to and in an undmined, well-stocked farmyard that hal not toon cleaned out in my way for thousand years. The Corcan soonis. to say drowsily, Why trouble to carry rabbish away! Leave it alone, it soon gets trodilen into the ground, and you will nover HEO it again. Then you save so much carrying." So all "matter which is not wanted" simply staps where it happens to fall. A walk through Seoul is a wade through orange-poel, fish-bones, eggshells, rutten cabbage, Jend rats, mangy dogs alive in more ways than one-these are a fow of the predominant features of the Corsun capital.
Buildings there are almost none at all. There OUR OWN MAKE are mat-hats by the million. It really must be the greatest collection of pigsties in the world. I have been a good deal in the interior of | Chips, and I thought some of those towns roached the very top notch of putridity. but I apologise to them.
J1
must be up in time for Marquis Ito to an O but it was only possible in the time to get about a tenth of them ornated.
Still, it is important to note the willingness shown by the Corean officials to do whatever 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 Cores under the Japaneus stimulus.
the warm wenther is close at hand, and will bring out the danger now dormant. Seoul lives on the surface of a stratam of ancient and modora filth that must be yards drop. In the vast majority of the houses there is no attempt at sanitation in any shape; int werely by usige, que corner of the mud floor come to be recognised us the general latrine, and the sewage is left to moniler out through whole in the wall, at the floor level. Some fow houSOR
By the way, one of the commonest sights in just outside, but in tnost cases tie bare ground for thought. Twenty Coronn Inhaivers with attain the distinction of establishing a cesspool Seoul would afford English working-mau food cesspool enough. The reader any think picks are set to dig up a had pises of road: they such conditions prerail only among the very have a rigid rule among themselves that no lowest and poorest people who have no chance to men must work faster than another, and so manage botter. In all countries there are ex- treme depths of poverty, here and there bold of the pick, all stop; and the multiplied
when one stops to moisten his hands for a fresh
in Corea it is general. Dirty habits and 'dis avoidably associated with squalor and Elth. But
ating indolence characterise even the highest classes.
i
'DARTRING
TRAIN MAN
Superb Skin
is obtained and maintained by using
'DARTRING'
"LANOLINE'
No imitation can bear the Daring', No imitation cm be called Dartring.
DARTRING TOILET LANDLINE
collapsibile tran DARTRING LANOLINE TOILET SOAP.
Demand the genuine
Wheinate:
1. Kolbaru Padiot, Søudni. Þng.
BILLIARDS
1955-1
than in any other country I have playing purposes as good as new. delays make the work } more slowly Our new patent Low Sot Express Cushions can be fitted to any Billiard Table, making it for seon. All picks rise simtuously, then each a slowly looks round to se how
poised aloft in several seconds, cautiously the rest are getting on. Then the picks,
hand. for they readily respond to external Yet there is much hopo-if they are taken in
influence. In fact, they seem eager to he ordered about.
connuence the down-stroke, but nobody dure lost. characteristic, ovom mere than apathy. is a
I think their predominant his weapon come down martly, for fear he should get himself disliked for spoiling the unison craving to be dominated, inthezice, even bullied of the performance. The coolies are not quite Their apathy is only the sprawling of "starlet-exactly together, and so at the sound very man
clover enough to make all the picks link WE runber where nobody has provided it with w has to look at every other, to notice which one pole. They need someone to slivet them, and was out of time, The resulting slowness is they seen the most willing people in the world, such as peth all mulerstanding." They only lack a backbone of their own, and they seen only too willing to lean on anyone.
|
is another crying evil that helps to make Cores Revorting to the subject of spidemies, thero
a plague spot, in all the country there, is no When Marquis Ito was known to be emning such thing as waterworks. Surface-wells visibly to Seval, there was a sudden rush if auch n
fouled by surface sewage are the main source thing is possible anong Coreins!) to cleanse far. In the Japanese yurter the well go deeper of water-supply in the city, for the river is too the Augen stables. The effort was weak and and are kept pretty clear of drainage. But ludicrous, but it has shown a good disposition dig a well ton feet deep if he found any water at as rulo no Corean would take the trouble to and an ungary for better performance in future. five feet, and no such thing as a filter is ever First, when the Seoul anthorities were formally dreamed of in their philosophy. Tea-drinking notified that the Marquin would come, as a very and the boiling of the water would no doubt do spadal messenger from Emperor to Emperor.ch to lessen the danger, but that the water is it was unofficially hinted that the streets along cannot afford to drink tea always. So death
seldom made to really boil, and the poorer class which the distinguished visitor would pass stalks over the land. and plucky Bttle Jopar were not quite a credit to the nation. So the will have to fight a greater foe than the Rus- Corean authorities. very randíly promised to
sian arms. have things cleaned up a bit, but they did mot get to work on the axecution of the promise till two days before Marquis Ito's arrival Seoul is, in short, a city of hovels.. The Then proclamations were posted all over the Imperial Palace would be considered nos very city, telling the people that the stresty glorious for a district magistrate in the pros
were disgraceful and must be cleaned. It is characteristic that the proclamation was porous sections of China. Thegreat Temple o Heaven, which I suppose is the No. 1 josshouse.
printed on plain slips of comnim paper, with of Coreo, in shabby and bare and discreditable, no official heading, 310 Government seat compared with the Man Mo Temple in Hong- nor Imperial coat of arms, no distinguishing kong. The foreign legations, two little hotels, mark at all. It has in fact, neither leading the railway-station, and possibly three or four or signature. Translated, it reads about as PIANO FACTORY other foreign buildings, are all right, and in the follows Dirt is disgraceful, therefore all Japaneso quarter there is a fairly good little householders must clear their street-fronts and Japaness town, but the rest of Soon! is com.gutters by the 18th of March. This is an official posed of huts and hovels, from end to end of the
$350 AND $395.
TO MAKE ROOM FOR THE
OUTPUT FROM OUR
Cash
NEW
OR
Credit. city. They are not all made of mats alone
Hongkong, 6th April, 1904.
THE
proclamation which must be obeyed or there will be penalties." That is all. And the Coreans some are of mud, with lumps of uncut stous gathered in wondering ewwds, staring at the embedded in it, and some of the roofs are of placard on the wall, and hazarding guessos what 1640 tile, very rough and poor. And the Corean it might be about, till some closer man came shops are correspondingly wretched little things, along who could read. He would spell it out Shopkeeping is mostly done by Chiness andaland, laboriously. and interrupt himself at Japanese and na far as I can see, all skilled intervals with a running fire of comment, and labour is Chinese or Japanese
the rost would listen and sometimes all talk at At any rate, if you hear
of once. They are great talkers, and their language sound sawing wood, of chipping stone, of hammering is one of those that use up a large number of nuils, the whirr of a sewing-machine, any noise words to express any idea. Ten words of of active labour, and if you go to see, you English need fifty of Corean. usually Hnd it is not a Corean at work. They “HONGKONG DAILY PRESS" sem generally to do little else but fatch and
carry, talk, and look on.
JOB PRINTING
DEPARTMENT
:::
OF THE
APPLI-
2
too.
TURBINES TRIUMPH.
The adoption of turbine engines for the two Conard leviathan is the baldest developman f.
(Proight on a case of Cushions to Dombay, Re. - only.)
BEST AFRICAN IVORY BILLIARD BALLS. THOROUGHLY SEASONED.
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AND MATERIALS OUT OF LONDON.
ALL ORDERS DESPATCHED BY RETURN MAIL STEAMER.
Illustrated price lists, giving prices and partionlars of everything pertaining to billiards, on be had on application from the Offices of this paper.
JOHN ROBERTS & CO., LD..
BILLIARD TABLE MAKERS AND IVORY TURNERS,
Hongkong, 6th April, 1904.
LANE,
BOMBAY.
[927-2
CRAWFORD & CO.
FOLDING CANVAS CAMP BEDSTEADS
THE MOST
in the history of shipbuilding sicca Brunel PORTABLE
OFT.GIN. LONG
GALARANY
$9 each.
AIGN
CLOSED.
THIN TROPICAL BLANKETS, $3.50 EACH,
built the Great Bantern. If successful, it will sound the death knell of the ordinary type of CAMP BED reciprocating engius for all are small and
On land turbines hare STEAD EVER special purposes: niivanead from one great access to another. They are now very largely suployed in driving | MADE. electric lighting machinery, and greatest triumph of all the whole of the horsepower required in the gig utio generating station for the electrised “Underg: ound" in London, the largest power station in the world, is to be furnished by, Parsons' turbines, Ou so the progress of the turbine, sides the Turbina astonished exports of all nations at the Jubilee Naval Review, has been a little more chequered. The loss of the Viper und the Cobra, though due to causes not even remotely associated with theic machinery, rave the now meobauisen a set back in the Navy: knt we have the Felor, a combina ticnul turbine engines for bigh speed with ecou- omien reciprocating engines for rusing pur- poses, in commission, and t e Amethyst, a third i class orniser which is to be turbine-driven, under construction. On the Clyde and in the Channel turbines bava gisen oqually successful results. But it is an enormous stride from a cross- Channel steamer or even a third class cruiser, to the largest and most powerfully engined vessole designed, and herein lies the tras enter. prise of the decision. However, the conclusion bas not been arrived at without elaborate experi- mentation and trials of unusual anguitude, and the Cunard engines, individually, will not be much larger than those being installed at the
Underground" Power station. experiment is the success it deserves to be, ao one will rejoice more than the marine engineers. The great advantage of the turbine is the avoidance of the alternate thrust and pull of the ciprocating pattern, which in these days of tremendous strain goa the finest steel, The enormous speed and increased horsepower throw
absence of vibration, reduced space, and greater simplicity of working parts in the turbine, all alleviate the most serious difficulties the marine
There is a similar ratio of words to deeds. If there are to be tau men working there must be fifty to look on and talk. That is how the To some readers, the recital of the manifold cleansing of the city proceeded. Á spala, for IS REPLETE WITH ALL THE LATEST uncleanliness of the Coreans will seem horrible instance, takes fire men to handle it: ons is
AND MOST UP-TO-DATE
and disgusting, and some may think such captain, and leclds the spade, while two bave things would be better unwritten. But there is ropes tied to it and help to tow the spade through ANCES FOR THE PRODUCTION OF neef that these things should be known and the soil, and the other two men are to look our
understood, not merely as showing the desira; and tako alternate spells at pulling the ropes. bility of some strong Power taking this country This is the way fields aro tilled, and it is in-hand, but for the additional reason that the the way the garbage is being scratched up conditions may have an important influence on in the streets of the metropolis. The spale the actual course of the present war. Seoul is blade is about the size of a duwing-room coal engineer has to face. a breeding ground of epidemic diseases. Every shovel. and some spades have a crow of seven year Corea loses many thousands of lives by. mon. Out of curiosity I timed one crew of six;
FIRST-CLASS WORK,
ALL DESCRIPTIONS OF
LLUSTRATED
CATALOGUES, epidemics, and there has practically never been they lifted into a basket about two cubic feet of
CIRCULARS,
VISITING CARDS,
AND
COMMERCIAL
And if the
effort, and to give their other garments another MITSUBISHI GOSHI-KWAISHA,
hitch. Saldom can you see half a dozen Coreans together but at least one of them at any given moment must be hitching up his trensers and
anything done to prevent them. Seoul usually rubbish in twenty minutes. About every five has the largest death-roll because it is the minutes all bands would knock off work to largest dirt-hole. The civilised world is greally disenss the weather, or the futility of humani concerned when a few hundred people are re- moved quickly and almost painlessly by being shet, or blown up, or bludgeoned, or drowned; it is something that interests propla greatly. I think it is a matter of greater concern when many thousands die, not in a flash of a moment, but gradually and with awful sufferings, in the @gonies of cholera and other scourges.
readjusting his waistband, for these people tie themselves together so negligently that they never stay tied long.
(MITSU BISHI CO.)
COAL DEPARTMENT,
MARUNO-UCHI, TOKIO, Cable Address, - IWASAKI,” which applies to ell Branch Offices and Hong- kong and Shanghai Agencies. A1, ABC 5th Edition, Western Union Codes used,
PRINTING TURNED OUT ACCURATELY, AND
These gangs of coolies have been working in The Corean official records show that there WITH THE GREATEST DESPATCH,
various parts of the city, listlessly digging up were over 370,000 deaths from cholera in 1786. the dirt from roadside ditches und piling it in UNDER THE DIRECT SUPERVISION including 60,000 in Seout; the Crown Prince heaps on the roadway. It was quite a long time was one of the victims. Thirteen years later before they roached the next stage, the remova) there was another epidemic, of a kind not quite of the heaps, and by that time a good deal of the clear, but it may have been the "black plague."stuff had slipped back to where it came from. In 1813 the land was ravaged by a kind of It is of the blue-black slimy sort, with an typhus, and 1821 saw one of the worst visitations fluvium strong enough to stop a clock. The SHANGHAI: H. J. H. TRIFT.
OF EXPERIENCED EUROPEANS.
BOOK BINDING.
MACHINE RULING,
GOLD LETTERING, the diseas
AND
MARBLING, ETC.,
ALL EXECUTED ON THE PREMISES
AT THE SHORTEST NOTICE.
LAW WORK,
LEDGERS AND ACCOUNT
of cholors ever known. In Seoul alone, ten thousand people died in ten days, and
extended its ravages
into the following year. Then in 1832 bagan a series of famines and epidemics, chiefly cholera, continuing uninterrupted for nine years. Typhus again swept over Seoal in 1833, and
workinen 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."
In front of the Emperor's palace I saw 37
at it.
MANAGER, MITSUBISHI Co., with name of
All Letters Addressed:
place under. BRANCH OFFICES:--- NAGASAKI, MOJI, KOBE, KARATSU AND HANKOW. AGENCIES
HONGKONG: H. U. JEFFRIES.
MANILA: Compania MariTIMA,
YOKOHAMA : M. AGADA, CONTRACTORS OF COAD to the fu perial Japanese Navy and Foreign Navies; the Imperial Arsonals; the Imperial Railway; Sanyo, Kinshu and the other Principal Bail word; Industrial Works; Home and Foreign Mail and Freight Steamers.
there are men now living who remember see- men lift one telegraph pole, white nearly 100
EXPORTERS OF COAL to Hongkong, ing the corpses piled in thousands just inside workmen looked on. It was supposed to be a Shanghai, Hankow, Singapore, Manila, North the South Gate, awaiting interment. The gang of 150, and they had a lot of poles to China, Korean ports and America.
SOLE PROPRIETORS of Takashima. people. desperate with hunger and suffering, be- place in position, but the whole gang kept to came riotous and stormed the Government one pole at a time, and took nearly an hour Ochi, Shinnew, Namasota and Kami-Yamada Collieries and also Hojo Colliery, which will be granaries, but found that all the grain supposed
It was a big pole, certainly, two feet ready to produce on a large scale the best Bazon to be stored against famine had been stolen by thick at the base, with a heavy top plece. to Coal from 1905.
Sclo Agents for Kigio, Komaten (Tagawa) the officials. The Prime Minister was chiefly cry about 80-wires, for there is a lot of new
Rod Materstima Coals. responsible, and had to fly for his life, hiding work being done in Seoul now, erecting, telegraph
The Head and Branch Offices and the Agen- for months in the provinces. This bringe the and telephone-poles. The graag would raise thecies of the Company will receive any order for terrible record down to the present generation, end of the pole a foot or two, prop it, and rest Coals produced from the above Colliorios.
Coal sold in 1993 by the Company amounted A SPECIALITY, AND AT PRICES which has been much the same. Ten years ago, a few minutes: By the time they had it nearly.
to 1,210,000 tons. WHICH COMPARE FAVOURABLY the Japanese army fighting against the Chinese upright, with the foot of the pole resting on the
TAKASHIMA COAL, Now and additional sbafts at the Takashima WITH ANY OTHER PRINTING ESTA-in Cores had an immense sick-list, and lost ten edge of the pit dug to receive it, they found the BLISHMENT IN THE FAR EAST, times as many lives by Corean epidemies as by pit was too narrow, and it took about ton ESTIMATES FURNISHED.
minutes to widen it an inch or two. The order Just now, with chilly days and freezing had been issued that all these polas, which have nights, germ life is comparatively inactive, but I been lying along the roadsides for a long time.
BOOKS
Hongkong, 15th April, 1904.
Chineso bullets.
Colliery have been completed and this well- knova best and most economical steam Coal in the EAST is now produced in abendance and can be supplied in any quantity, Hongkong, th April, 1904.
[1102
דיי
A' NECESSITY AND A LUXURY FOR THE SUMMER.
BUTTERFIELD & SWIRE,
Agenta
LONDON AND LANCASHIRE
ROYAL EXCHANGE
Hongkong, 18th August, 1903
PALATINE
ORIENT
Fire Insurance Companies.
[1319-2
NEW ORIENTE HOTEL
134
CORNER REAL AND MAGALLANES, WALLED CITY. MOST MODERNLY EQUIPPED-HOSTELRY IN MANILA, P.I. HOTEL
Latest and most Sanitary equipment. Electric Lights and Call Bells. Elegantly
Furnished Rooms. Coolest Dining Room in Manila,
RESTAURANT
Handsomely decorated. Cool and pleasant, Best of attendance, Private dining rooms for parties. Only the bust of wines and liquors. Under the direction of Mr. and Mrs. Newirth.
BAR
Under the direction of American mixologist. Anything you want served promptly and pleasantly, BILLIARD ROOM
Thoroughly modern and up-to-date. attendance.
STABLES.
Now
Brunswick-Balke tables. Export Markers in
Eine turnouts for the guasts of the hotel, Elagant rubber-tired carriages, fast horses, good coachmen. The New Oriente Hotel is now open for inspection.
SIMON
JAPAN
SCHNEER & CO.,
PROPRIETORS.
COALS.
MITSUI BUSSAN KAISHA
(MITSUI & CO.
[288
HEAD OFFICE:-), SURUGA CHO, TOKYO, LONDON BRANCH:-34, TIME STREET, E.C. HONGKONG BRANCH -PRINCE'S BUILDINGS, Ion Hovan STREET
OTHER BRANCHES:
York, San Francisco, Hamburg, Bombay, Singapore, Soura'ya, Manila, Amoy, Shanghai, Chefoo, Cientsin, Nowehwang. Fort Artbar, Seoul, Chamulpo, Yokohams, Yokoanita Nagoya, Omaka, Kebo, Kure, Shimonoseki, Maji. Wakarantau. Karaten, Nagasaki, Kncbinets, Basebo, Maidzura Miike, Hakodate, Taipeh, ko,
Telegraphic Address: "MITSUI” (A.B.C. and A 1 Ccdes) CONTRACTORS OF COAL to the Imperial Japanese Navy and Arsenals and the State Railways Principal Bailway Companies and Industrial Works; Hume and Foreign Mail. and Freight Steamers. * SOLE PROPRIETORS of the Farcons Mike, Tagawa, Yamane and Ida Coal Mints; and SOLE AGENTS for Hokoku, Houdo, Kanada, Fujinotana, Mameda, Bannonra,Onoara Otsail
Sasahara Tsubakure, Yoshingtaní, Yoshio, Yunokibam, and other Coals,
N. INUZUKA, Manager, Honkong
88]