siasm. It is mostly placer mining, but in the north one frequently runs across more ambitious attempts in the shape of shafts. The Koreans build a fire on the ledge, and when the rock is hot they throw on water, which cracks the quartz and makes it possible to dig it out with their rude picks. This primitive method makes it impossible to proceed in any but a vertical direction, and if the vein should happen to run obliquely it is soon lost. They crush the ore beneath great round granite boulders, which are rocked back and forth over it by the use of levers or handles fastened to its sides. Only the free gold is obtained, and the waste is very great.
We have it on the authority of expert foreign miners that gold is found very irregularly in the Korean veins. For a distance it may be very rich, and then the vein will narrow to almost nothing for many feet or yards and then open out again freely. There seem to be no great masses of rock in which there is a small but even amount of the yellow metal, as is the case in the Rand in South Africa. This makes Korean gold-mining more of a venture than in some places.
Absence from home and distance from constabulary control breed the same contempt for the amenities of life among miners here as elsewhere.
In spite of the fact that so large a portion of the peninsula is of granite, there are extensive portions where coal is found. In the vicinity of Pyeng-yang there are rich anthracite veins, and on the east coast bituminous coal is found in various places. When properly opened up, these valuable resources will be of immense importance to the country.
Iron is not so widely distributed, but in one considerable district in Kang-wun Province there are immense beds of iron ore. The people scrape it up from the surface of the ground and smelt it in their rude furnaces by the use of charcoal. It is used very largely for their great iron rice-kettles and for various agricultural implements. For all wrought-iron work it has been found cheaper to import foreign rod-iron and sheath-
