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| Jemulpo Harbor in the early 1900s / Robert Neff Collection |
By Robert Neff
As evidenced by his articles published in the United States, Dr. Clarence E. Edwords, a physician and travel writer from San Francisco, knew how to tell a great story. He exclaimed there were so many things to see in Korea and he could write a great deal about his adventures in Seoul, but because of the amount of material he would concentrate only on the most "interesting incidents." Apparently Seoul wasn't exciting enough because he failed to publish any articles about the city, but he was not shy about sharing his adventures of the wild and dangerous interior of the peninsula.
According to our intrepid adventurer, he was invited by his friend (apparently this friend lived in Seoul) to leave Jemulpo (modern Incheon) and travel up the Han River for about 100 kilometers to the wild mountainous interior. Judging from the good doctor's accounts, nothing was wilder than his imagination.
On the first day, they traveled for many hours before stopping at a small village along the river. The villagers ― "dressed in a most fantastic garb" ― were hesitant to allow the Westerners to land as they feared these strangers would bring diseases amongst them. It was only with a great deal of persuasion by their kisu (guards) did the villagers acquiesce and allow the Americans to stop and look around for a short time before resuming their river travel.
Eventually they came to the mountainous region and were surprised to see the people there always traveled in large numbers and were heavily armed. At first, Edwords assumed this was because of "the constant savage warfare between the clans or tribes" battling for the scarce sources of food as "they raise[d] scarcely enough grain to keep them[selves] alive" but he later learned he was wrong. They traveled in large armed groups as protection from the monarchs of the darkness ― tigers.
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| Isabella Bird Bishop's boat on the Han River in the mid-1890s / Robert Neff Collection |
In his letter, Edwords explained that unlike tigers in other parts of the world that lurk in dense undergrowth and suddenly ambush their victims, the Korean tiger "stalks boldly forth and attacks man and beast." Its sheer size (twice the size of most tigers), blood-thirstiness and "little or no experience with fire arms," emboldened it to attack anything ― man or beast ― it encountered.
Of course, Edwords wasn't just relying upon the exaggerated accounts he heard from the Korean villagers; he had his own experience:
"[One night, as we were passing along the river], I was sleeping soundly when I was awakened by a sudden scrambling of men overhead and then the boat bumped up against the bank and almost threw me out of my bunk. Immediately there was a heavy thump on deck as if some large body had fallen. I arose and started for the deck when I was stopped by a terror stricken boatman who yelled something unintelligible at me in Korean. It was only when my friend came out and I learned that a tiger had taken possession of the boat. He had jumped from shore to the boat fortunately not striking any of the men and would remain there until he was satisfied he could get nothing.
"After a long time one of the boatmen ventured to peep out and said the tiger had gone away. The men cautiously crept out and got the boat under way again, and the rest of the night was devoid of further incident."
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| A Korean home in the countryside in the early 1900s / Robert Neff Collection |
Edwords and his companions were lucky to have escaped with their lives but there were other dangers:
"In addition to tigers there are bears, ferocious leopards, and many poisonous serpents. Crocodiles infest the rivers, and sharks abound in the waters of the ocean. Taken altogether it is not a land where one could enjoy life to its utmost, for there is too much continual alarm over danger."
Edwords planned on spending several weeks in Korea but suddenly changed his plans and instead traveled to the Philippines. It wasn't the "continual alarm over danger" of the Korean interior that changed his plans, but the possibility of war between the United States and Japan for the Philippines.
On Sept. 20, 1907, Edwords left Jemulpo aboard a steamship bound for Manila. As far as I can ascertain, he never returned to Korea (assuming he was ever here).
Many of the good doctor's accounts seem to have been fabricated from information he gleaned in other countries ― such as Japan and the Philippines ― or from books. The descriptions of the Korean military read like those from the 1880s, tiger stories remained popular through the 1910s ― albeit, his was the first I've heard of a Korean tiger attacking a boat ― and his claims of crocodiles in the Han River seem as if they were taken from old European publications of Hamel's adventures in Korea in the mid-17th century.
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| A Korean tiger in the early 1900s / Diane Nars Collection |
According to Vibeke Roeper and Boudewijn Walraven, the Dutch publisher G. J. Saeghman reprinted Hamel's journal in the early 1670s and tried to make it more appealing by adding "a number of illustrations of elephants and crocodiles taken from another book" as well as slipping in "an 'appropriate' passage about the presence of crocodiles in Korea."
It was fiction in the 1670s and it was fiction in 1907.
However, there is at least one other account of a crocodile (alligator) in a Korean river ― unlike the others, it was not an intentional fraud. Roy Chapman Andrews, a famous explorer and naturalist (often referred to as the real Indiana Jones) who later became director of the American Museum of Natural History ― traveled to Korea in the early 1910s and in 1929 published a book about his adventures. One of the pictures in the book is of a dead alligator that was mistakenly mislabeled as being in Korea.
It is a shame the book wasn't published prior to 1907; the good doctor could have used the image as proof of his Korean adventures.
My appreciation to Diane Nars for her invaluable assistance.
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| The mistaken image of the alligator on a Korean river / Robert Neff Collection |
Robert Neff has authored and co-authored several books including, Letters from Joseon, Korea Through Western Eyes and Brief Encounters.
