Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/323

Chafteb X. COREAN SOCIAL CUSTOMS. The origin of the isolated people called Coreans, almost the oidy people completely shut in from all intercourse with western nations, is as unknown as that of all other peoples For though its present high state of civilisation is of much older date than that of the leading nations of the world, its infancy and first tottering steps are as much a dead blank as the infantile experiences of all nations and men. The most reliable statement is apparently that which points to the northern portions of Manchuria as their last resting place, previous to their i)rogress south and south-east into Liaotung and across the beautiful Taloo, into their own present more beautiful but overcrowded and hilly country. It is more probable, however, that what is now one Corea, which was three kingdoms in the sixth and seventh centuries, and scores of petty kingdoms, more properly independent clans, in the centuries before, had not one source nor was peopled by the same race of men ; certainly not at one time. The fortunes of war — ^now permitting them to overflow into other lands and mingle with other peoples, now driving them back across their boundary rivers, anon introducing myriads of captives into their midst, and again driving other peoples among them for shelter — ^have been so varied, oft repeated, and spread over so many centuries, that it is impossible the Corean of the present day should be of immixed blood ; yet his language proves him only less different from the Manchu at his side than £rom the more remote Chinaman. The face of the Corean approaches many degrees nearer the western than that of the northern Chinese, who are again still nearer than their southern fellow-oountiymen. They are black haired like the Chinese;