With some such words as these, a visitor to the Hill of the Nine Recluses recorded his impressions of the scenery therefrom, some two hundred years ago, little thinking that from over the “storm billows” could come by and by an “ocean man,” to stand on the spot where he stood; still less that he would offer his Western readers some sort of a translation of the officially preserved poem he there indited.

As yet, the hill in question has hardly had more than one foreign visitor, if the priest-monk on the hill-top is to be believed; but that countryside well repays a visit. It is an almost lovely neighbourhood; the lake waters ever blue, the banks ever fertile; the towering hill peaks, the highest in the Hanyang county, shutting in the scene from the sounds and distractions of the outer world.