width, with a flooring of earth and bush, which bent and swayed upon slender poles, beneath the slightest burden. Some streams were unbridged, and the diminutive ponies splashed through them, gladly cooling their sweating flanks as their drivers waded or carried one another to the distant bank. Wild ferns, butterflies, and flowers revelled in these unkempt gardens. The red dog-lily and purple iris glowed against the foliage of the shrubs and bushes. Gigantic butterflies eclipsed the glories of the rainbow; their gorgeous tints blending into harmony with the more subdued plumage of the cranes and storks that floated lazily across the inundated spaces of the paddy-fields. Other birds, with dove-grey, pink, or yellow breasts and black pinions, fished in the streams with raucous cries. The most amazing tints, recalling some of Turner's later pictures, gladdened the eye in these delightful valleys. In the depths of the valleys the mountain torrents flowed more idly, and the stream meandered in a thousand directions. Upon either bank, its volume was diverted to the needs of some adjacent rice-field. In these paddy-patches green and tender shoots were just sprouting above a few inches of clear water. Here and there, fields of wheat bordered these water-soaked stretches; oats, corn, barley, tobacco, cotton, beans and millet were scattered about the sides and plains of the mountain valleys in a fashion which proclaimed the fertility of the soil.
Everything throve, however, and the industry of the workers in the fields was manifested at every turn of the road. Their ingenuity in making the most of available land recalled the valleys which run down to the fiords of Norway, where, as in Korea, patches of cultivated ground are visible at the snow level. Here, in these beautiful valleys, perhaps
