are strung together, generally a hundred at a time. There are usually as
many as two thousand to two thousand eight hundred _cash_ to a Mexican
dollar, the equivalent of which is at present about two shillings; you
can, therefore, easily imagine what the weight of one's purse is if it
contains even so small a sum as a pennyworth in Corean currency. Should
you, however, be under an obligation to pay a sum of, say, £10 or £20,
the hire of two oxen or six or eight coolies becomes an absolute
necessity, for a sum which takes no room in one's letter-case if in Bank
of England notes, occupies a roomful of hard and heavy metal in the
country of the Morning Calm. Great trouble has been and is continually
experienced in the kingdom owing to the lack of gold and silver coins;
but to the Corean mind to make coins out of gold and to let them go out
of the country amounts to the same thing as willingly trying to
impoverish the fatherland of the treasures it possesses; wherefore,
although rich gold-mines are to be found in Cho-sen, coins of the
precious metal are not struck for the above-mentioned reason.

[Illustration: COOLIES' ARRANGEMENT FOR CARRYING LOADS]

So much for Corean political economy. The coins used are of different
sizes and value. They range, if I remember right, from two _cash_ to
five, and an examination of a handful of them will reveal the fact that
they have been struck off at different epochs. There is the so-called
current treasure coin of Cho-sen, one of the more modern kinds, as well
as the older coin of Korai, the Ko-ka; while another coin, which seems to
have been struck off in the Eastern provinces, is probably as old as any
of these, and is still occasionally found in use. The coins, as I have
said, are strung together by the hundred on a straw rope; a knot is tied
when this number is reached, when another hundred is passed through, and
so on, until several thousands are sometimes strung to one string. As