what would have otherwise been the lost art of eating.

Chemulpo is a port with a future. The Japanese prefer to call it Jinsen;
the Chinese, In-chiang. It possesses a pretty harbour, though rather too
shallow for large ships. The tide also, a very troublesome customer in
that part of the world, falls as much as twenty-eight or twenty-nine
feet; wherefore it is that at times one can walk over to the island in
front of the settlement almost without wetting one's feet.

Chemulpo's origin is said to be as follows: The Japanese government,
represented at Seoul by a very able and shrewd man called Hanabusa, had
repeatedly urged the Corean king to open to Japanese trade a port
somewhat nearer to the capital. Though the king was personally inclined
to enter into friendly negotiations, there were many of the anti-foreign
party who would not hear of the project; but such was the pressure
brought to bear by the skilful Japanese, and so persuasive were the
king's arguments, that, after much pour-parleying, the latter finally
gave way. Towards the end of 1880, the Mikado's envoy, accompanied by a
number of other officials, proceeded from the capital to the Imperatrice
Gulf and selected an appropriate spot, on which to raise the now
prosperous little concession, fixing that some distance from the native
city. In course of years it grew bigger, and when I was at Chemulpo there
was actually a Japanese village there, with its own Jap policemen, its
tea-houses, two banks, the "Mitsui-bashi" and "The First National Bank of
Japan," and last but not least, a number of _guechas_, the graceful
singers and posturing dancers of Nippon, without whom life is not worth
living for the Nipponese.

Like the Australians generally, who begin building a town by marking out
a fine race-course, so the light-hearted sons of the Mikado's empire,