nature, do not forget to take a bottle of the strongest salts with you.  We might start on our peregrinations from the West Gate, as we are already familiar with this point.  We are on the principal thoroughfare of Seoul, which we can easily perceive by the amount of traffic on it as compared with the other narrower and deserted streets.  The mud-houses on each side, as we descend towards the old royal palace, are miserable and dirty, the front rooms being used as shops, where eatables, such as rice, dried fruit, &c, are sold.  A small projecting thatched roof has been put up, sustained by posts, at nearly each of these, to protect its goods from sun and snow.  Before going two hundred yards we come to a little stone bridge, about five feet wide, and with no parapet, over a sewer, in front of which is an open space like a small square.  But look!  Do you see that man squatting down there on a mat?  Is he not picturesque with his long white flowing robe, his large pointed straw hat and his black face?  As he lies there with outstretched hands, dried by the sun and snow, calling out for the mercy of the passers-by, he might almost be mistaken for an Arab.  His face is as black as it could be, and he is blind.  He is one of the personalities of Seoul, and rain or shine you always see him squatting on his little mat at the same spot in the same attitude.

[Illustration:  THE BLIND BEGGAR:  SEOUL]

It is only seldom that beggars are to be seen in Cho-sen, for they are not allowed to prowl about except on certain special occasions, and festivities, when the streets are simply crammed with them.  It is then that the most ghastly diseases, misfortunes, accidents, and deformities are made use of and displayed before you to extract from your pockets the modest sum of a cash.  I cannot say that I am easily impressed by such sights, and far less horrified, for in my lifetime it has been my luck to see so many that I have got accustomed to them; but I must confess to being on one occasion really terrified at the sight of a Corean beggar.  I was sketching not very far from this stone miniature bridge on which we are supposed to be still standing, when I perceived the most ghastly object coming towards me.  It looked like a human being, and it did not; but it was.  As he drew nearer, I could not help shivering.  He was a walking skeleton, minus toes and fingers.  He was almost naked, except that he had a few rags round his loins; and the skin that hardly covered his bones was a mass of sores.  His head was so deformed and his eyes so sunken that a Peruvian mummy would have been an Adonis if compared with him.  Nose he had none—­et ca passe—­for in Seoul it is a blessing not to have one; and where his mouth should have been there was a huge gap, his lower jaw being altogether missing.  A few locks of long hair in patches on his skull, blown by the wind, completed a worthy frame for this most unprepossessing head.

Oh, what a hideous sight!  He hopped along a step or two at a time on his bony legs and toeless feet, keeping his balance with a long crutch, which he held under his arm, and he had a sort of wooden cup attached by a string to his neck, into which people might throw their charities.  “He is a leper,” a Corean, who stood by my side and had noticed the ever-increasing expression of horror on my face, informed me.