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Ancient Punishment in Korea and bloody edicts could prove a barrier. His work did not permit him to attempt the exploration of the interior of the peninsula, but he did succeed in finding out a great deal from those who had already visited what was then a little known land. “This geographical mis sionary,” so runs the editor's preface, “had not travelled through Korea; but he had followed, from one sea to the other, the northern boundary of this
kingdom.
Korea is surrounded by water
escape to the Japanese island of Goto and thence to Nagasaki. They were warmly received there by the command
ant of the Dutch trading station and ultimately returned to Amsterdam in a Dutch frigate. Hamel’s account, which is based on his own observations, was verified in
every detail by the testimony of those companions who returned with him to Holland. Regis, however, obtained his information at second hand, from a
on three sides, an observation which
Tartar lord who, confined within pre
verifies the fact that we have long been deceived in mistaking it for an island. Regis obtained his information about
scribed limits, would naturally lack the opportunity of close observation. The
the interior of the country from a Tartar
lord sent by the Emperor Kang-hi to the King of Korea.” Hamel was a Dutch navigator and
was cast away with thirty-five com panions on the island of Quelpart, near the Korean coast, from which place they were soon taken to the mainland and conveyed to Seoul (Sior), which was then, as now, the national capital. The Hollanders remained in the country for thirteen years, meeting for the most part with very kind treatment, but not allowed under any circumstances to leave the country. Many of the men
took native wives and, giving up all thought of escape, elected to spend the rest of their days in the land of their adoption.
I have occasionally seen Koreans in the streets of Seoul whose thick and curly red beards, in striking contrast to the black and somewhat scantier adorn
Frenchman practically admits as much in speaking of the visits of the envoys of the two countries. “Korean ambas sadors . . . in China," he writes, “are shut up at first in their dwellings; and when they are (at last) set free they are
surrounded with spies in the guise of a cortege. The Tartar lord, according to the missionaries, had not been much
freer in Korea.
Spies kept constant
watch over him; and every word that
escaped his lips was immediately com municated to the Court by means of a certain number of men placed at inter
vals along the streets.” The Koreans certainly taxed their
ingenuity in devising punishments for parricide and other particularly revolt ing crimes. “A woman who kills her husband," writes Hamel, whose account now lies before me, "is buried alive up
to the shoulders in the middle of a highway, and near her is placed a hatchet Every passerby, below the order of
ment of their brethren, marked them as
nobility, is required to strike her on the
the descendants of those rugged Dutch sailors. In the year 1666, when but sixteen of the original thirty-six were living, Hamel and seven others of the more adventurous secretly bought a junk of a native and succeeded in making their
head with it, until death finally ensues."
The usual penalty for murder, from the account of the same writer, must have
been even more horribly revolting, though not devoid of a certain gruesome fitness. “The punishment of murder is singular. After the feet of the criminal
