As I stood on a mountain-pass, looking down on the valley leading to Ichon, I recalled these words of my friend.  The “strong hand of Japan” was certainly being shown here.  I beheld in front of me village after village reduced to ashes.

I rode down to the nearest heap of ruins.  The place had been quite a large village, with probably seventy or eighty houses.  Destruction, thorough and complete, had fallen upon it.  Not a single house was left, and not a single wall of a house.  Every pot with the winter stores was broken.  The very earthen fireplaces were wrecked.

The villagers had come back to the ruins again, and were already rebuilding.  They had put up temporary refuges of straw.  The young men were out on the hills cutting wood, and every one else was toiling at house-making.  The crops were ready to harvest, but there was no time to gather them in.  First of all, make a shelter.

During the next few days sights like these were to be too common to arouse much emotion.  But for the moment I looked around on these people, ruined and homeless, with quick pity.  The old men, venerable and dignified, as Korean old men mostly are, the young wives, many with babes at their breasts, the sturdy men, had composed, if I could judge by what I saw, an exceptionally clean and peaceful community.

There was no house in which I could rest, so I sat down under a tree, and while Min-gun was cooking my dinner the village elders came around with their story.  One thing especially struck me.  Usually the Korean woman was shy, retiring, and afraid to open her mouth in the presence of a stranger.  Here the women spoke up as freely as the men.  The great calamity had broken down the barriers of their silence.

“We are glad,” they said, “that a European man has come to see what has befallen us.  We hope you will tell your people, so that all men may know.

“There had been some fighting on the hills beyond our village,” and they pointed to the hills a mile or two further on.  “The Eui-pyung” (the volunteers) “had been there, and had torn up some telegraph poles.  The Eui-pyung came down from the eastern hills.  They were not our men, and had nothing to do with us.  The Japanese soldiers came, and there was a fight, and the Eui-pyung fell back.

“Then the Japanese soldiers marched out to our village, and to seven other villages.  Look around and you can see the ruins of all.  They spoke many harsh words to us.  ’The Eui-pyung broke down the telegraph poles and you did not stop them,’ they said.  ’Therefore you are all the same as Eui-pyung.  Why have you eyes if you do not watch, why have you strength if you do not prevent the Eui-pyung from doing-mischief?  The Eui-pyung came to your houses and you fed them.  They have gone, but we will punish you.’

“And they went from house to house, taking what they wanted and setting all alight.  One old man—­he had lived in his house since he was a babe suckled by his mother—­saw a soldier lighting up his house.  He fell on his knees and caught the foot of the soldier.  ‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ he said, with many tears.  ’Please do not burn my house.  Leave it for me that I may die there.  I am an old man, and near my end.’