with their padded clothes above enormous saddles, and supported on either
side by a servant, while another man, the _Mapu_, led the steed by hand.
The ponies are so very small that even the Coreans, who are by no means
tall people, their average height being about 5 ft. 4 in., cannot ride
them unless a high saddle is provided, for without these the rather
troublesome process of dragging one's feet on the ground would have to be
endured.

This high saddle, which elevates you some twenty inches above the pony's
back, naturally involves a certain amount of instability to the person
who is mounted, the balancing abilities one has to bring out on such
occasions being of no ordinary degree. The Corean gentleman, who is
dignified to an extreme degree, and would not for the world run the risk
of being seen rolling in the mud or struggling between the pony's little
legs, wisely provides for the emergency by ordering two of his servants
to walk by his side and hold him by the arms and the waist, as long as
the journey lasts, while the _Mapu_, one of the stock features of Corean
everyday life, looks well after the pony and leads him by the head as one
might a big Newfoundland dog. The _Mapu_ in Corea occupies about the same
position as Figaro in the "Barber of Seville." While leading your pony he
takes the keenest interest in your affairs, and thinks it his business to
talk to you on every possible subject that his brain chooses to suggest,
abusing all and everybody that he thinks you dislike and praising up what
he fancies you cherish, that he may perhaps have a few extra _cash_ at
the end of the journey, which he will immediately go and lose in
gambling. He speaks of politics as if he were the axis of the political
world, and will criticise the magistracy, the noble, and the king if he
is under the impression that you are only a merchant, while evil words
enough would be at his command to represent the meanness and bad manners
of the commercial classes, if his pony is honoured by being sat upon by a