[Illustration:  THE PALACE GROUNDS AND SOUTH GATE FROM THE NEW PALACE]

I had some more amusing experiences on the occasion of my first visit to the royal palace.  The King had sent me a message one evening saying that any part of the royal palace and grounds would be opened to me, if I wished to make observations or take sketches, and that it would give him much pleasure if I would go there early the next morning and stay to dinner at the palace.  This invitation to spend the whole day at the palace was so tempting that I at once accepted it, and next day, accompanied by one of the officials, a Mr. S., I proceeded early in the morning to the side entrance of the enclosure.

The palace and grounds, as we have seen, are enclosed by a wall of masonry about twenty feet high, and from a bird’s-eye point of vantage the “compound” has a rectangular shape.  There are almost continuous moats round the outside walls, with stone bridges with marble parapets over them at all the entrances.  At the corners of the wall d’enceinte are turrets with loopholes.  There soldiers are posted day and night to mount guard, each set being relieved from duty at intervals of two hours during the night, when the hammer bell in the centre of the palace grounds sounds its mournful but decided strokes.  At midnight a big drum is struck, the harmonic case of which is semi-spherical and covered with a donkey-skin first wetted and made tight.  It is by the sound of this smaller bell within the palace grounds that the signal is given at sunset to the “Big Bell” to vibrate through the air those sonorous notes by which, as already stated, all good citizens of the stronger sex are warned to retire to their respective homes, and which give the signal for closing the gates of the town.

When you enter the royal precinct, you run a considerable amount of risk of losing your way.  It is quite a labyrinth there.  The more walls and gates you go through, the more you wind your way, now round this building, then round that, the more obstacles do you seem to see in front of you.  There are sentries at every gate, and at each a password has to be given.  When you approach, the infantry soldiers, quickly jumping out of the baskets in which they were slumbering, seize hold of their rifles, and either point their bayonets at you or else place their guns across the door, until the right password is given, when a comical way of presenting arms follows, and you are allowed to proceed.

In the back part of the enclosure is a pretty villa in the Russian style.  A few years ago, when European ideas began to bestir the minds of the King of Cho-sen, he set his heart upon having a house built in the Western fashion.  No other architect being at hand, his Majesty commissioned a clever young Russian, a Mr. Seradin Sabatin, to build him a royal palace after the fashion of his country.  The young Russian, though not a professional architect, did his very best