Note 4 — Chapter XLII · THE WALLS OF ISOLATION SAPPED.

Once more Maistre and Thomas Tsoi essayed to enter the guarded peninsula, by sailing early in 1848 in a Chinese junk from Macao to Merin Island off Whang-hai, but no Christians met them. By way of Shanghae, they then went into Shing-king, and in December to the Border Gate, meeting couriers from Bishop Ferreol. On a fiercely cold, windy, and dark night, which drove the soldiers indoors to the more congenial pleasure of the long pipe, cards, and cup on the oven-warmed floors, Thomas Tsoi got safely through Ai-chiu, and in a few days was in Seoul, and later in Chulla. The work of propagation now took a fresh start. A number of religious works composed or translated into the vulgar tongue were printed in pamphlet form from a native printing press, and widely circulated. In 1850, the Christians numbered eleven thousand, and five young men were studying for the priesthood. Regular mails, sewn into the thick cotton coats of men in the embassy, were sent to and brought from China. A French whaler having grounded off the coast, the French consul at Shanghae, with two Englishmen, came to reclaim the vessel’s effects, and meeting three young men sent by the ever-alert Thomas Tsoi, took them back to Shanghae, the third remaining to meet his comrades on their return with fresh missionaries to come. After still another failure to enter Corea, Maistre set foot in Chulla-dō, by way of Kokun Island, even while the fire-signals were blazing on the headlands on account of the presence of Russian ships.4