Morning Calm v.3 no.22(1892 Apr.)

THE MORNING CALM. No. 22, VOL. II.] APRIL 1892, [PRICE 1d. The Bishop's Letter. CHEMULPO: December, 1891. DEAR FRIENDS, This month has seen the setting in of what promises to be a long and severe winter. We hear that it is the same in Japan and China. The Peiho was closed to navigation at the beginning of the month. We in Corea for some days in succession had the thermometer down to 12°. And yet, strange to say, whilst I am writing—towards the end of December—the rain is coming down in torrents and the weather is mild. Can the English climate—with all its delightful uncertainties—have travelled eastward to us? During this month and the last, large quantities of wild-fowl have been passing over us to the south, which naturally attracted the attention of our sportsmen, who, on their holidays, went in search of geese, duck, and teal. They generally manage to bring back some welcome addition to the larder. The result one day was a large wild swan weighing 12 lbs. I believe it took more than one to kill it; Mr. Warner and Mr. Peake both fired, so they have been dividing the honours between them. But if there was any doubt as to who shot the bird, there was no doubt at all as to who should eat him. The whole of the members of the Mission in Seoul were invited to Nak Tong to a wild swan banquet, which was a great success. John Wyers, who when I last wrote about him was assisting Mr. Peake in the printing house, has been offered the post of Consular Constable, which carries with it a small salary sufficient for him to live upon. The duties will not prevent him from learning Corean, in which he is already making good progress. I have recommended him to accept the offer, because it not only gives him an opportunity of earning his livelihood without being an expense to the Mission, but it also relieves me of a certain anxiety as to providing for his future in the Mission. You will remember that he has been supported, not by the S.P.G., but by some kind friends of the Mission who have sent us a sum of money which has sufficed for his wants hitherto. You must therefore, in future, no longer consider him as helping in the printing press, but as helping the Mission in a much more   substantial way, by supporting himself and co-operating with the Mission in all ways not inconsistent with his duties as constable. I ought to add that at present he is only acting constable, but we hope that the recommendation which has been forwarded to headquarters will lead to his being permanently appointed. And already I have derived a benefit from having him near the Mission House of the Advent. During this month and the last I have been building the Parsonage House, as I told you in my last letter. We scarcely got it finished before the frosts set in. I still fear that some of the plaster may fall off when the winter goes; but by dint of lighting fires in the three rooms and keeping them going we hope to avoid this. Shortly before Christmas I came down to Chemulpo to help our deacon, Mr. Pownall, who has been in charge there since the beginning of October and helping Dr. Landis in the Night School. John Wyers has been looking after the Parsonage in Seoul in my absence, and in a letter yesterday tells me that the walls are drying fast. It is a comfort to me to know that I have him living close by, and that he is able to look in from time to time and minister to my wants and those of the two ladies who are in the Advent Mission House. We have had a disappointment this month. One of Bishop Scott's clergy, the Rev. Francis Sprent, who has for some time been stationed at T'ai An Fu, in the province of Shan Tung, was under a promise to pay us a visit before he went home on furlough. We have been looking forward to this visit with great eagerness, for he has much to tell us of his lonely life in China. Great, then, was our disappointment when the steamer which should have brought him from Chefoo brought us instead a letter saying that he was unable to come after all. But I hope that many of you will have an opportunity of making his acquaintance whilst he is in England. Friends of Corea should be friends of China, and especially of North China, which is bound to us by so many links. And I may tell you (since he is not present to hear me say it) that Mr. Sprent is an out-and-out missionary. Our Christmas has passed off very quietly and happily. It was a great pleasure to find myself once more in St. Michael's Church, which one gets to love more the oftener one sees it. By the time this reaches you the Christmas of 1891 will be a matter of ancient history; but you will have known that we were thinking of you all on the day, and praying God to bless you and yours with all the blessings of Christmas and the New Year. Ever your affectionate friend,

• C. J. CORFE.

  First Triennial Festival. The first Triennial Festival of Bishop Corfe's Mission to Corea will (D.V.) be held on Tuesday, May 3. In addition to a large number of celebrations of the Holy Eucharist in various churches throughout the country, there will be a High Celebration at the Church of St. John the Divine, Kennington, at 11 A.M., when the sermon will be preached by the Rev. Canon Mason, Rector of All Hallows, Barking. A general meeting will be held at the Church House, Dean's Yard, Westminster, at 3 P.M., under the presidency of the Lord Bishop of Ely. Rear-Admiral P. H. Colomb, Admiral D. Robertson Macdonald, the Rev. J. C. Cox-Edwards, Chaplain of the Fleet, the Rev. Canon Doxat, the Rev. H. W. Tucker, the Rev. S. Berkley, and C. G. Napier Trollope, Esq., will address the meeting. At 5.30 P.M. there will be a festival evensong and short address at St. Matthew's, Westminster. The collections throughout the day, after all the expenses of the Festival have been paid, will, by the special request of Bishop Corfe, be given to the S.P.G. A Walk through Corea. I ENGLISH MISSION, SEOUL, COREA: January 20, 1892. DEAR MR. EDITOR, I ought long before this to have sent you some account of the long journey across Corea and back again which Mr. Peake and I made at the Bishop's request last autumn. As it was, practically, the first time "the Mission” had ventured out of Seoul and Chemulpo, I do not doubt that your readers will be interested to hear something of our experiences. But, of course, they and you will understand at the outset that the journey was undertaken solely with the view of learning more about the people, their customs and their languages, and something about the possibilities of future travel and active mission work outside the capital; for, although we have made some way with the languages, &c., a considerable period must still elapse before we can possibly be in much of a position to teach. LIFE IN COREA. I do so wish I could do something, by way of preface, to enlighten the minds of our good friends in England as to the real conditions of life here in Corea, and especially in Seoul and the Treaty Ports. It makes one blush—indeed, one hardly knows whether to laugh or to cry—when one reads in letters from home and in newspapers awe-struck remarks about "the Bishop's   life in danger"—"an outbreak against the whites' (!!) fraud at Chemulpo"—and the like. In point of fact, there are, as far as one can see, no special dangers and few special hardships attaching to life in Corea, at any rate in Seoul and Chemulpo. The climate is excellent, with slightly greater extremes of heat and cold than we are used to in England; the people are intensely interesting and (so far as we have as yet had experience of them) both amiable and attractive; communication with the outside world is (though the ways of the Japanese Post Office are apt to be trying) both frequent and good; and one's bodily wants are well catered for by the one or two excellent "stores” to be found in Seoul and Chemulpo, kept by Chinamen and stocked with almost every conceivable European and American commodity. Moreover, the French Mission has been here fifty years, though it is true that it has only within the last ten years ventured to publicly assert its existence, and two American missions (Methodist and Presbyterian) came here five or six years before we did; while, to say nothing of other foreign residents, there have been for some years past consulates in Seoul representing England, France, Germany, Russia, and America, in addition to the Chinese and Japanese legations. As a matter of fact, life in Seoul and Chemulpo has about as little difficulty and discomfort (let alone danger!) about it as life in South Kensington or Chelsea. And one feels that it is perfectly hopeless to try to present anything like a fair picture of life and work in Corea to our friends in England so long as their minds are preoccupied with such strangely exaggerated ideas of the difficulties we have to face. There are difficulties enough before us in our work, but they are difficulties of a totally different kind to those which seem to appeal so strongly to the imagination of our friends in England. TRAVEL IN COREA—PASSPORTS. To return to my muttons. No foreigner is allowed to travel in the interior of Corea without a special permit or "passport" from the Corean Government. This passport (which is readily granted at the request of one's consul) is a formidable looking document, covered with Chinese characters in blue and a variety of official stamps and seals in red; and it stands one in very good stead on a journey, entitling one to appeal for assistance, under any circumstances of difficulty, to the nearest Corean magistrate. Of course one travels simply as a “foreigner," for missionaries are in no way recognised in the treaties; and, indeed, so recently as 1888 the action of an American Presbyterian drew from the Corean Government a warning to the effect that   the old laws against the propagation of Christianity were still in force. Nothing, however, is apparently now done to enforce these laws, the treaties merely stipulating that foreigners shall not distribute "literature obnoxious to the Government." This, presumably, includes Christian literature, though this has never been definitely stated. If so, it might easily prove a serious obstacle in the way of the Protestant missions, whose energies lie so largely, I believe, in the direction of what they call “sowing the Word.” Travelling without a passport, or acting in flagrant defiance of treaty regulations, would scarcely involve one in "martyrdom," as our friends of the “romantic school” would doubtless like to imagine. At the utmost, such conduct would probably result in one's being sent by a local magistrate under escort to Seoul, and, on a repetition of the offence, one's consul would probably suggest that a continued residence in Corea was undesirable, and take steps to secure one's removal. ROADS AND BRIDGES. A few words now as to the facilities and difficulties of travel in Corea. Roads, in our sense of the word, there are none. Even the “road” from Seoul to Chemulpo is nothing more than a well trodden track, which a few hours of heavy rain renders quite impassable. And the same is true of the rest of the country. There are tracks more or less well defined leading in every direction, and along these tracks, especially on the more frequented routes, one meets a constant stream of human beings and heavily laden pack-horses and oxen. Every here and there for a hundred yards or so perhaps the track is wide enough and sound enough for wheeled vehicles; but, as a rule, it is so scored by watercourses, so obstructed by jagged rocks protruding from the earth's surface, or so encroached on by swampy paddy-fields on either side, as to be useless except for pedestrians and beasts of burden. The consequence is that, with the exception of a few clumsy bullock-carts which ply between Seoul and the river at Mapu (a distance of four miles), one rarely, if ever, sees anything in the shape of a wheeled cart or carriage in Corea. Nor is the country much better off for bridges than it is for roads. Occasionally one comes across a fine bridge built of large blocks of granite, but even these are of no great length, and are generally rather dilapidated; and the streams, which are mostly very shallow, except during the summer rains, are usually crossed by means of stepping-stones or of slight temporary bridges, roughly made of the trunks and branches of fir-trees. Only five times in the course of our 600 miles walk did we come to rivers of sufficient size to render   a ferry-boat necessary. The extremely hilly nature of the country doubtless supplies another very valid reason for the absence of wheeled vehicles. A journey in Corea involves an unending succession of climbs up and down hill. Somebody—probably Père Dallet, from whose book on Corea most subsequent writers have drawn the bulk of their information—has aptly compared the appearance of the country, as viewed from any height, to a "choppy sea." Nothing certainly could better describe the view, for instance, from the heights at the back of Gensan. In every direction, as far as the eye can reach, one can see nothing but an interminable succession of hill peaks and ranges, for all the world like the wave-crests of a storm-tossed sea. (To be continued.) An Audience with the King of Corea. The following is an interesting extract from the letter of a Naval Officer who has lately visited the Mission:— PORT ARTHUR: November 8, 1891. ... We got to Chemulpo on the 29th, and the captain sent for me and said, "I am ordered to try and get an audience with the king of Corea, and expenses will be allowed for two officers to attend me: would you like to come?” Of course I jumped at it, so went ashore to try and get ponies, as there is thirty miles to do to get to Seoul, where the king lives. I went to the Consul, and he said he would have them ready by 7.30 next morning. At his house I met Bishop Corfe, and had a long talk with him. ... The captain slept at the Consul's that night, and I joined him there early next morning, and had breakfast there, but was dismayed to hear that, on account of nearly all the bullocks having died lately from disease, the ponies couldn't be got at such short notice, as they have to take the bullocks' place in carrying goods about the country, so we came to the conclusion that we were not good enough to carry about! The Consul, Mr. Fraser, lent the captain his pony, a very nice one, and lent me his mountain-chair, which consists of two long poles joined together near the middle by a piece of wood which forms a back; the seat is suspended from the poles by four strings, and a footstool is suspended in the same way; the ends have a strap over them, under which a stout stick, about 6 feet long, is put, and a coolie gets at each end of each stick and puts it on his shoulder: that makes four men actually carrying. Then there are four others who walk beside them and take the weight of the chair   while the carriers change the stick from one shoulder to the other; by this means they get along between four and a half and five miles an hour on good road. I walked about ten miles of the way, and was carried the remainder. The country is very pretty, and looks very good pheasant cover, but they say it is not. We stopped about halfway up for lunch, and got to the Consulate-General in Seoul by 4.30. The captain had already wired to Mr. Hillier, the Consul-General, about the audience, and he answered that we were to come to him. The house is quite new, and he only got in the day before we came. We had tea, then strolled round the grounds and went to call on Dr. Wiles, who is the Mission doctor. He is a retired surgeon-general, and has been through six campaigns, including Crimea; he does such a lot of good in many ways, and is one of the Mission's hardest workers, and lives in such a funny little Corean house. His bedroom is no bigger than my cabin, and the whole house not much bigger than 20 feet by 8 feet. We slept very well that night, and were up at 7.45 next morning for service at 8 in the Mission Chapel, which is very small. There are seats for about twenty sitting close, and it is about 28 feet by 8 feet wide by 8 feet high. There is a harmonium, but it wasn't used that day. After service we were introduced to Mr. Warner, the Chaplain, who showed me over the Bishop's quarters, as I knew you would like to hear about that. His room is under the same roof as, but on the opposite side to, the chapel, and is 14 feet long by 8 feet wide. Everything is very plain and simple. The bedstead is boards supported on trestles; there are no pictures; a table, chair, and several books comprise the furniture, and a straw mat for a carpet. In the morning and afternoon we went out and looked about Seoul. It is, without exception, the very dirtiest place I have ever been in; the streets are very narrow and uneven, and so filthy—as are all the people. They have a novel way of warming their houses, which are all one-storied with a stone floor. Under the floor there are several little tunnels made about 9 inches square, which all converge to one point on each side of the house; they light a wood fire at one end, and the smoke goes through the tunnels and out the other end, where there is a chimney generally in the wall, and ending about 6 feet from the ground, and it is quite an alarming sight the first time to see the smoke coming out halfway up the side of a house. (N.B.—The fireplace is outside the house, and it is only necessary to light the fire for about half an hour and the whole floor is heated up for hours.) It is so cold here; I can   hardly hold my pen. Mr. Hillier had people to meet us at lunch and dinner every day. On Sunday he asked an American who is in Corean employ as an instructor for their army; he has the rank of colonel, and, of course, passes as a big swell. He gave us some very amusing details about their army: the pay of a soldier is 1s. 1d. a month and 133 lbs. of rice, out of which he provides his own clothes, so very few of them are dressed alike. They are so dirty and untidy; they are not allowed any cartridges for fear they would shoot each other. The cavalry are the most amusing, though there are only 24 of them mounted, and they are only for show; they wear complete suits of armour, of which the helmet alone weighs 12 lbs., so they have one man to hold them on and another to lead the horse. On Monday morning we got into undress uniform, and went to call on the President of the Foreign Office, who received us in a very nice room, and asked a lot of questions, during which we were kept from starving (though we had only finished breakfast an hour before) by tea, champagne, persimmons, pine seeds, coffee, and cigars! After lunch we got into full dress and started for the palace in official chairs, which are very like the chair I came up in, except that the seat is fixed and has a cover over it. When we got to the main gate of the palace we had to get out of our chairs, and were received by the Secretary of the Home Office in his court dress, which is made of a very fine sort of silk, light blue, very pale, in colour, with a square patch of embroidery in front and behind; he wore an official belt, which looked much too big for him, but, as all the other big-wigs wore the same, we found it was uniform, but it certainly struck me that this Secretary was in an economical turn of mind when he bought his belt, and had an eve to making it last a great many years! We had to walk about half a mile to the waiting-room, where we found the Presidents of the Home and Foreign Offices, and we had more tea, coffee, champagne, &c. After waiting about half an hour a messenger came in to say the king was ready, so off we went, the two Presidents going ahead, each with two servants supporting him, which gave them the appearance of having had too much champagne, but it was all right, and we found it was quite usual. Eventually we arrived in a big courtyard with a house on one side, with a long flight of steps up to it, and we saw the king at a table close up to the back wall, with a crowd of courtiers on either side of him, and a man holding a big sword on each side close to him. The Presidents went slowly up the steps and kow-towed, banging the desk with their foreheads three times, and then got up, and we came on and were presented   by Mr. Hillier, through the interpreter. His Majesty responded to our bows by putting his fists (closed) together and slightly bowing his head; then he asked how we were, and hoped we had a good journey up. The next question was, “How is your Queen?” and Mr. Hillier replied, “The last time we heard from Her Majesty she was enjoying salubrious health," at which K. and T. nearly exploded. It all seemed so stupid, and everybody was so solemn about it. The captain explained that the admiral was very sorry he couldn't come up himself, but he hoped to do so next year, and His Majesty replied he would be very pleased to see him, and hoped the English ships would come to Corea oftener; also that, as the relations between Corea and England were very friendly, and he hoped they would always remain so, as he respected the English very much. He then sent his best wishes to the Queen, and we thanked him for the honour he had done us in granting an audience, and then withdrew, going out backwards, and we nearly fell down the stairs. The king is a very bright-looking and intelligent man, and quite the most animated Corean we saw (as they are all so fat and lazy-looking). We were with him about a quarter of an hour, and then went on to do the same show with the Crown Prince, who is more than half an idiot, and had to be prompted by his attendants in asking us questions. The king was in half-mourning, and was dressed in very pale coffee-coloured silk, and a white hat which I can't describe, but I have photos of him. After the audience we were given special permission to see over some parts of the palace; one place especially, viz., the lotus pond, is very rarely shown to foreigners. Mr. Hillier said the audience was very satisfactory, His Majesty being much more pleased and affable than usual, and he wished the British could be presented oftener at Court, as the Americans seem to have it all their own way, which will tend to injure our trade if the country is opened up more. … The Spirit of Missions. THE Bishop of Caledonia has forwarded to the Church Missionary Society a narrative account of the conversion to Christianity of Sheuksh, chief of the Kitkatla Indians, who had long been one of the stoutest opponents of the missionaries. When nearly all the members of the tribe were at home, Sheuksh summoned the men to his house. He was arrayed in a scarlet robe, bedecked with mother-of-pearl and curious embroideries, and when all were assembled he rose and said: "I wear the outward sign of former ignorance and of ancient customs that   never changed until the white man's faith was preached. I thought I ought to keep them, for I am not wiser than the ancients who kept them and did great deeds. I loved them. So did you. I have struggled to maintain them. I have defied the Queen's officers. They threatened me as late as this last springtide with prison and disgrace. I told them I would not avoid them. I also resisted the Bishop, and suffered not his teachers to land. I concealed not the wish of my heart. You know to what lengths I went. Most of you approved my doings. But the end has come. Let the waves tell the story of our fathers. Our children's lips will form no fit words. Where do dead things go? This goes with them.” Here he threw off his scarlet robe and the other insignia of a heathen chief. "I am naked, but can clothe my body with the white man's clothes." This he there and then proceeded to do. “What will cover my heart? I can wrap nothing round it. God sees it, and He knows all the past and the present. He knows I am ignorant and sinful. He has this summer made me know it. I am now dressed like a Christian. Those tokens of the dark past I will never touch again. What shall I do next? I am too old to go to school. I cannot read. I am like a child, knowing little, but wanting to learn. Will Jesus Christ have me? Will He help me? I will never turn back. I give myself to God. Now pray for me—pray, pray! I want to know what will please Him. I must know. Begin at once to pray!” In the scene which followed prayer and praise and Holy Scripture followed in succession for seven hours and a half. The Bishop adds: “Not a shred of outward heathenism exists in what, till lately, was its one stronghold. Not a soul remains that is not pledged in this wonderful manner to live and die as a Christian.” If anything could show the good effects upon the life of a diocese which results from a great act of devotion to missionary work, it is the current quarterly paper of the Bloemfontein Mission. The Mission has suffered a great loss—in one sense—by the call of Bishop Knight-Bruce to leave the diocese for the yet more arduous work of organising the new Mashonaland diocese. Yet their loss has become a most noble gain. The whole diocese is full of enthusiasm for the Bishop-elect, Dr. Hicks, of Cambridge; full of enthusiasm, too, for their late Bishop, who is in England taking a rest and preparing for his new work. The following extract from his farewell letter to his old diocese is very valuable:— “Change is a necessary concomitant of progress, though in this   case, as Mashonaland is the daughter diocese of Bloemfontein, the step from one to the other is but a short one and a natural one for me to take. Though no one is in any way necessary to the carrying out of the Almighty's plans, yet He uses especial tools for especial purposes; and He having guided my steps to this country, it would probably take anyone else, however superior to myself, some time to be in the same relation to the country that I, of necessity, am. The blessing which seems to have attended the work of our Church in Mashonaland of late may, I think, be accepted as a seal of the correctness of the step.” Meanwhile Canon Balfour has offered to stay on in Mashonaland until the Bishop arrives. “I have just returned," he says, "from a very interesting missionary tour in the country between Fort Salisbury and the Zambesi, among the petty chiefs of the Makorikori—a country where, I believe, no missionary has ever been before. I found the natives very friendly. They always gave me food and a hut to sleep in, and listened attentively to what I told them." The following interesting letter from a Kiungani boy to his English “mother” is taken from the excellent Children's Tidings of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, which is now published monthly:— KIUNGANI COLLEGE: July 19, 1891. MY DEAR MOTHER, Thank you very much for your gifts which I have received. I do thank you many times. I am very sorry because many days have passed since I sent you a letter, neither have I expressed my gratitude for your presents. Well, my mother, pardon me. I am your child who is not without gratitude. Now I will try to tell you something about our home here at Kiungani. When I went to my home at Mkuzi, my heart did not desire to return to Kiungani. I think I felt like this for a year and a half; then I left the Mission and stayed many days at my own village. By the grace of God, my heart was changed, and I desired to return to Kiungani. The Rev. Mr. Dale went to my father to talk to him about it. My father refused; then I said, “If he refuses to let me go to Kiungani, let me go to the Mission at Magila," and to this my father consented, and I stayed there about two months. Then I came home, and I did not want to go to Magila again. Mr. Dale gave me the work of teaching the little children in the school.   When I had taught for a time, there were three boys of the Mission who went to Kiungani. Well, after some days, a teacher came here from Magila, and his name was Samuel Sehoza, and he called me and taught me a little about the Talents in the Gospel of St. Matthew, in that parable which our Lord spoke to the Jews. At once my heart felt moved to return to Kiungani. and I knew that it was the Lord God who had put that wish into my mind, in His mercy. Well, the Rev. G, Dale went to my father to talk to him about it, and he agreed at the first word; three times before he had refused, and now, the fourth time, the Lord God put it into his heart to consent. That very day the Bishop arrived from Magila on his way to Nyasa; truly I was full of joy, and we got everything ready with great gladness; and at 4.30 in the morning we left Mkuzi, and at one o'clock we reached Pangani, and at four in the afternoon we got into a vessel to bring us to this land of Zanzibar; and now I am here at Kiungani, together with those who came with us, and we are all very well, and while I am here I can get excellent teaching, and I shall try very hard to learn with all my might, and I ask my God that He will help me in this work, and I shall do what I am able with my talents if God helps me, and at last I think I shall go and teach those, my friends, who are in darkness. Do not be disturbed when you get this letter; I feel grief and shame very much about this thing. Forgive me, my mother; I hope I shall see a letter from you. Now I think this is the end of my words. I shall not forget you again, my mother; I will try to write a letter every mail to send to you. I am your child, who is not worthy to be your child. YOHANA MATTAYO MGONEA. Bishop French presented a copy of the Qurán to a missionary with the remark, “You can do nothing without it”; meaning, of course, that no missionary could hope to bring over the Mohammedans to the faith of Christ without a knowledge of their sacred book. “I have no hesitation," says the recipient of the gift, "in recording my absolute conviction that to attempt to lastingly influence the Moslem without the knowledge of their language, their sacred books, the Qurán, and the Hadis, &c., and of their habits of thought and life—coupled, of course, with the knowledge of the sacred Scriptures and much prayer for the Holy Spirit—will prove a failure."