The Face of Manchuria, Korea, & Russian Turkestan by Emily Georgiana Kemp

Unlike Venice, Seoul should not be approached after dark, but we arrived late at night, and drove in rickshas through ill-lighted streets and over endless stones to our destination, Miss Finder's rest-house for missionaries, excellently situated in the upper part of the town.

With morning light we received a different and beautiful impression of the town. It is encircled within lofty hills of granite that change in colour at different times of day from gold and steel to deep blue. Formerly high walls surrounded it, pierced by noble gateways, but these walls are rapidly disappearing to form material for building Japanese houses of truly Philistine ugliness. Every day sees new and deplorable changes in the way of picturesqueness, and one is tempted to say that even sanitation may be too dearly bought.