"Cathay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... South America from the Land of Fire must be essayed: and beyond that a voyage of thirteen thousand miles across the Pacific, during which the little caravels must slowly make their way northward again till the latitude of Cathay was reached, parallel to that of Spain itself. For any other sea-way to Asia the known coast-line of America offered an impassable barrier. In only one region, and that as yet unknown, might an easier ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... in check, and that mould its character. We do not know, and we can not know without a trial, how new environment will affect it, and what new traits of character it will develop under radically different conditions. The gentle dove of Europe may become the tyrant dove of Cathay. The Repressed Rabbit of the Old World becomes in Australia the Uncontrollable Rabbit, a devastator and ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... dwells as far beyond the Ilkhan as the Ilkhan is far from the Pillars of Hercules. But rumour has it that he is a clement and beneficent prince, terrible in battle, but a lover of peace and all good men. They tell wonders about his land of Cathay, where strips of parchment stamped with the King's name take the place of gold among the merchants, so strong is that King's honour. But the journey to Cambaluc, the city of Kublai, would fill ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... stranger. Such nescience is patent even in matters seemingly scientific. For although the Chinese civilization, even in the so-called modern inventions, was already old while ours lay still in the cradle, it was to no scientific spirit that its discoveries were due. Notwithstanding the fact that Cathay was the happy possessor of gunpowder, movable type, and the compass before such things were dreamt of in Europe, she owed them to no knowledge of physics, chemistry, or mechanics. It was as arts, not as sciences, they were invented. And it speaks volumes for her civilization that she ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... from whom they learned the art of writing. After this they conquered the land of Sarugur, and the country of the Karanites, and the land of Hudirat, and returning into their own country, took a short respite from war. Again assembling a great army, they invaded Cathay, and after a long struggle, they conquered the greater part of that country, and besieged the emperor in his greatest city. The siege lasted so long, that the army of the Mongals came to be in want of provisions, and Zingis is said to have commanded that every tenth ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... of West Indies to his discovery, because he sailed to them westwards; and persisted in that denomination, even after he had certainly ascertained that they were interposed between the Atlantic ocean and Japan, the Zipangu, or Zipangri of Marco Polo, of which and Cathay or China, he first proposed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... had traveled, as every one knows, across Asia to Cathay (China) in the thirteenth century and had visited the Great Khan or Emperor. On his return he wrote the "Relation," a most exaggerated but fascinating account of the wealth of that remote land and of Cipango (Japan) also, which the Chinese had ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... Eton and Oxford, served under Sir Philip Sidney's father in Ireland, and fought for the Netherlands against Spain. After his return he composed a pamphlet urging the search for a northwest passage to Cathay, which led to Frobisher's license for his explorations to ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... practical experience, the reflecting mind of Columbus was naturally led to speculate on the existence of some other land beyond the western waters; and he conceived the possibility of reaching the eastern shores of Asia, whose provinces of Zipango and Cathay were emblazoned in such gorgeous colors in the narratives of Mandeville and the Poli, by a more direct and commodious route than that which traversed the eastern ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... For field and for city, for plough and for loom. The West for you, girls! for our Canada deems Love's home better luck than a gold-seeker's dreams. Away! and your children shall bless you, for they Shall rule o'er a land fairer far than Cathay. ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... of the Last of the Altun Khans or Kin Emperors of Cathay, from the (fragmentary) Arabic Manuscript of Rashiduddin's History in the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society. This Manuscript is supposed to have been transcribed under the eye of Rashiduddin, and the drawings were probably derived ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... war with the Moors and had camped near the Pyrenees with his host, determined to conquer their leaders, Marsilius of Spain and Agramant of Africa. To his camp came Orlando, the great paladin, with the beautiful Angelica, princess of Cathay, in search of whom he had roamed the world over. Orlando's cousin, Rinaldo, another of the great lords of Charlemagne, also loved Angelica, for he had seen her immediately after drinking of the Fountain of Love ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... But the empire of Alexander crumbled, Parthians annihilated the legions of Crassus. Persians and Seljuks and Ottomans barred Europe from the East. Steady communication ceased. Asia withdrew under her cloudy mysterious curtains. Legendary fumes, Cathay, Zipango, the Indias of the Great Ocean, arose. Once again, the two basins were cut off. Once again, each began secreting a substance radically different from the other's, a substance growing more individual with each elapsing century. ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... The Diadem was gilded first, and down the beach the long light tremulously disclosed the faint scarlet of the flamboyant-trees, their full, magnificent color yet to be revealed, and their elegant contours like those graceful, red-tiled pagodas on the journey to Canton in far Cathay. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... miles of Europe," said he, getting Tennyson a little mixed, "than one of Cathay, or ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... undertaken by foreign nations. In the year 1497, Sebastian Cabot, son of a Venetian merchant resident in Bristol, sailing in the service of Henry VII of England, navigated to the northern seas of the New World. Adopting the idea of Columbus, he sailed in quest of the shores of Cathay, and hoped to find a northwest passage to India. In this voyage he discovered Newfoundland, coasted Labrador to the fifty-sixth degree of north latitude, and then returning, ran down southwest to the Floridas, when, his provisions beginning to fail, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... ship, and set sail all so fast with a merry gale at south-east; to which point of the compass the chief pilot, James Brayer by name, had shaped his course, and fixed all things accordingly. For seeing that the Oracle of the Holy Bottle lay near Cathay, in the Upper India, his advice, and that of Xenomanes also, was not to steer the course which the Portuguese use, while sailing through the torrid zone, and Cape Bona Speranza, at the south point of Africa, beyond the equinoctial line, and losing sight of the northern ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... pig-tailed simpering rakes Who kiss their hands (three miles away) To dainty beauties of Cathay Beside those un-foreshortened lakes. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... deal with any new situation. Consecrated custom may keep Chinese civilisation safe in a state of torpid immobility for five thousand years; but fifty years of Europe will achieve more, and will at last present Cathay with the alternative of moving on or moving off. Instinct might lead us on if progress were an automatic law of nature, but this belief, though ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... Montevideo will wear the new jacket you promise yourself, while you will be off Cape Horn, singing "Haul out to leeward," with a wet stocking on your neck, and with the same old "lamby" on, that long since was "lamby" only in name, the woolly part having given way to a cloth worn much in "Far Cathay"; in short, you will dress in dungaree, the same as now, while the crimps and landsharks divide your scanty earnings, unless you "take in the slack" of your feelings, and "make all fast and ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... that we had the fortunes of Columbus, Sailing his caravels a trackless way, He found a Universe—he sought Cathay. God give such dawns as when, his venture o'er, The Sailor looked upon San Salvador. God lead us past the setting of the sun To wizard islands, of august surprise; ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... was not a way across the Atlantic to open those routes again, they were closed forever; and Columbus set out not to discover America, for he did not know that it existed, but to discover the eastern shores of Asia. He set sail for Cathay and stumbled upon America. With that change in the outlook of the world, what happened? England, that had been at the back of Europe with an unknown sea behind her, found that all things had turned as if upon a pivot and she was at the front of Europe; and since then all the tides of ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... a thousand others will rise up to preach the same doctrine." A new reign has come; the Empress Dowager, dying, has been succeeded by a mere boy, whose father, the Prince Regent, holds the imperial sceptre. But the sceptre is no longer all-powerful. {94} For the first time in all the cycles of Cathay the voice of the people is stronger than the voice of the Throne. Men do not hesitate any day to say things for which, ten years ago, they would have paid the ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... far-off times besides the Vikings of the North other daring sailors sailed the seas. But all their sailings took them eastward. For it was from the east that all the trade and the riches came in those days. To India and to far Cathay sailed the merchant through the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, to return with a rich and fragrant cargo of silks and ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... bring them. He will fulfil Benton's noble thought. The railroad must complete the voyage of Columbus. The statue of the Genoese, on some peak of the Rocky Mountains, high above the flying cars, must point to the West, saying, "There is the East! There is India and Cathay." ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... How often has the Occident invaded our domains And boasted of its victories! Yet of them what remains? Seems India exceptional? Fools, judge not by a day! The horologe of centuries moves slowly in Cathay. The brilliant son of Macedon saw, crushed and pale with fear, The vanquished East from Babylon to Egypt and Cashmere; But though the conquered Orient lay helpless, as his slave, Of Alexander's influence how much survived ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... from the learned, strangely visualized the North American mainland as narrow indeed. Apparently, they conceived it as a kind of extended Central America. The huge rivers puzzled them. There existed a notion that these might be estuaries, curling and curving through the land from sea to sea. India—Cathay—spices and wonders and Orient wealth—lay beyond the South Sea, and the South Sea was but a few days' march from Hatteras or Chesapeake. The Virginia familiar to the mind of the time lay extended, and she was very slender. Her right hand ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... loathsome head up in thine hands, And kiss it, and be master presently Of twice the wealth that is in all the lands, From Cathay to the head of Italy; And master also, if it pleaseth thee, Of all thou praisest as so fresh and bright, Of what thou callest ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... budge from Viareggio, having discovered the village of Corsanico on the heights yonder and, in that village, a family altogether to my liking. How one stumbles upon delightful folks! Set me down in furthest Cathay and I will undertake to find, soon afterwards, some person with whom I am quite prepared to spend the remaining years of ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... gradual inclusion of all the Atlantic countries of Europe, through whose maritime enterprise the historical horizon was stretched to include America. In the same way, mediaeval trade with the Orient, which had familiarized Europe with distant India and Cathay, developed its full historico-geographical importance when it started the maritime discoveries of the fifteenth century. The expansion of the geographical horizon in 1512 to embrace the earth inaugurated a widespread historical movement, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... stirred up to wild voyages many a secular man in search of St. Brendan's Isle, "which is not found when it is sought," but was said to be visible at times, from Palma in the Canaries. The myth must have been well known to Columbus, and may have helped to send him forth in search of "Cathay." Thither (so the Spanish peasants believed) Don Roderic had retired from the Moorish invaders. There (so the Portuguese fancied) King Sebastian was hidden from men, after his reported death in the battle of Alcazar. The West Indies, when they were first ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... from afar afforested the bay. Within their huge and chambered bodies lay The wealth of continents; and merrily sailed The hardy argosies to far Cathay. ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... Colomb de preferer de beaucoup les calculs de Marin de Tyr a ceux de Ptolemee et a force de conjectures Colomb parvient a restreindre l'espace de l'Ocean qui lui restait a traverser des iles du cap Vert au Cathay de l'Asie orientale a 128 deg." (Vida del Almirante).—Humboldt's Geographie du Nouveau Continent, vol. ii., ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... this kind, vaguely inspired by the Crusades and their legacy of discovery from Bagdad to Cathay, that the Vivaldi left Genoa to find an ocean way round Africa in 1281-91, "with the hope of going to the parts of the Indies"; that Malocello reached the Canary Islands about 1270; and that volunteers went on the same quest nearly ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... and near the Boreal cliff The monarch in seclusion lay, A wondrous human hieroglyph, Worshipped from Chile to Cathay; When lo! a cry, "Sire, up and fly! The pirate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... common and close neighbor to the two competitors for her commercial good-will, England and New York. Modern Anglo-Saxondom and old Cathay touch eaves with each other. Hemlock and British oak rub against bamboo, and dwellings which at first sight may impress one as chiefly chimney stand in sharp contrast with one wholly devoid of that feature. The difference is that of nails and bolts against dovetails ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... will have it that America was discovered in consequence of the desire of Europe to profit by the commerce of Cathay, which had hitherto reached them only by the long and expensive process of a journey due west. One caravan had passed on the spices and other valuables to another, until they reached the Mediterranean. It was asked whether the trip ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... road to Mombas-a, Drawing nearer toward Cathay, Where the north star now is under, 'Neath the ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... of the earth. Enterprise, led on and accompanied by science, was already planning the boldest flights into the unknown yet made by mankind, and it will soon be necessary to direct attention to those famous arctic voyages, made by Hollanders in pursuit of the north-west passage to Cathay, in which as much heroism, audacity, and scientific intelligence were displayed as in later times have made so many men belonging to both branches of the Anglo-Saxon race illustrious. A people, engaged in perennial conflict with a martial and sacerdotal despotism the most powerful in the world, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that nothing can part us now. I was wrong to let my little girl worry herself all alone here, but I—I—thought it was all so—so bright and free out on this hill,—looking far away beyond the Golden Gate,—as far as Cathay, you know, and such a change from those dismal flats of Tasajara and that awful stretch of tules. But it's all right now. And now that I know how you feel, we'll ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... that Columbus was mistaken in his belief, and that the shores he had discovered were not those of India and Cathay, when vigorous efforts began to find some easy route to the rich lands of the Orient. Balboa, in 1513, crossed the continent at its narrow neck, and gazed, with astounded eyes, upon the mighty ocean that ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... men as "Uncle Larry"—was as pleasant a travelling companion as one could wish. He was the only son and heir of a father, now no more, but vaguely understood when alive and in the flesh to have been "in the China trade"—although whether this meant crockery or Cathay no one was able with precision to declare. Larry Laughton had been graduated from Columbia College with the class of 1860, and the following spring found him here in Venice after a six months' ramble through Europe with ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... a suggestive ring have those three words for "the foreigner in far Cathay."[*] What visions do they conjure up of ill-served tiffins, of wages forestalled, of petty thefts and perhaps a burglary; what thoughts of horrid tom-toms and ruthless fire-crackers, making day hideous as well as night; what apparitions of gaudily-dressed ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... knob gently! There's the Thumbless Man, Still weaving glass and silk into a dream, Although the wall shows through him — and the Khan Journeys Cathay beside ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... distributing the discarded garments among their guests. At last, the rough Tartar clothing worn on their travels was displayed and then ripped open. Within was a profusion of jewels of the Orient, the gifts of Kublai Khan of Cathay. The proof was regarded as perfect, and from that time Marco was acknowledged by his countrymen, and loaded with distinction. When Drake returned from the Straits of Magellan and, powdered and beflunkied, told his lies at fashionable London dinners, ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... masters largely brought — Dear diamonds of their long-compressed thought, Rich stones from out the labyrinthine cave Of research, pearls from Time's profoundest wave And many a jewel brave, of brilliant ray, Dug in the far obscure Cathay Of meditation deep — With flowers, of such as keep Their fragrant tissues and their heavenly hues Fresh-bathed forever in eternal dews — The violet with her low-drooped eye, For learned modesty, — The student snow-drop, that doth hang and pore Upon the ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... was, was not free from that universal credulity which still reigns in the breasts of all men respecting matters with which they are not personally acquainted; and the glowing descriptions of Columbus and his followers respecting the rich Cathay and the Spice Islands of the Indies have had so permanent a hold upon the imagination, that even the best educated amongst us have, in their youth, galloped over Pampas, in search of visionary Uspallatas. Nor is it yet quite clear that the golden city of El Dorado ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... Charlemagne comes Angelica (daughter to the king of Cathay, or India) and her brother Argalia. Angelica is the most beautiful woman any of the Peers have ever seen, and all want her. However, in order to take her as wife they must first defeat Argalia in combat. The two most stricken by her are Orlando ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... the distant beacons. Forward, forward, let us range, Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change. Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day; Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.'" ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... the island which I have just said was called Johana, I sailed along its coast some considerable distance toward the west, and found it to be so large, without any apparent end, that I believed it was not an island, but a continent, a province of Cathay. But I saw neither towns nor cities lying on the seaboard, only some villages and country farms with whose inhabitants I could not get speech, because they fled as soon as they beheld us. I continued on, supposing I should come to city or country houses. At last, finding that ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... bay, Winds wet with the eager breath of spray, Warm and sweet from the oceans we have dreamed of; From gardens of Cathay. ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... far Cathay The nightingale still trills her lay Beside the Porcelain Palace door, And courtiers praise her as before I If emperors dream of bygone things And musing, weep the while she ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... of traffic," said the host; "and especially he has set up silk manufactories here which match those rich bales that the Venetians bring from India and Cathay. You might see the rows of mulberry trees as you came hither, all planted by Maitre Pierre's command, to feed ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... that appears to the contrary, generous livers, not "acid ghouls" or bran-eating valetudinarians. Shakespeare died at fifty-one, but great thinkers and poets have generally been long-lived. "Better fifty years of Europe" or America "than a cycle of" rice-eating "Cathay." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... make a bow; and then I seize my brush (or pen) And paint in hues enamel-bright Scenes of Cathay ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... "Oh, god of Cathay!" he cried sibilantly, "in what have I sinned that this catastrophe has been visited upon my head! Learn, my two dear friends, that the sacred white peacock, brought to these misty shores for my undying glory has been lost to me! Death is the penalty ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... Indian Carracks, and then to push on to storm the pearl treasuries of Panama. For the first time, Elizabeth had shown herself willing to trust her favourite in person on the perilous western seas. Raleigh was to command the fleet of fifteen ships, and under him was to serve the morose hero of Cathay, the dreadful Sir Martin Frobisher. Raleigh was not only to be admiral of the expedition, but its chief adventurer also, and in order to bear this expense he had collected his available fortune from various quarters, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... around the ebony throats of the belles of Tongataboo; I have panted beneath the sun's fierce rays in India, and frozen under the icy blasts of Greenland; I have mingled with the teeming hordes of old Cathay, and, deep in the great pine forests of the Western World, I have lain, wrapped in my blanket, a thousand miles beyond the shores of ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... of your balcony Smiles down two stars, that say to me More peril than Angelica Wrought with her beauty in Cathay. ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... over with odds and ends of tin and tarpaulin, and the play was on. There was the orchestra against the back-cloth, rendering selections from popular Pekin revues on the drum, cymbal and one-stringed fiddle. There were the actors apparelled in the gorgeous costumes of old Cathay strutting mechanically through their parts, the female impersonators squeaking in shrill falsetto and putting in a lot of subtle fan-work. And there was the ubiquitous property-man drifting in and out among ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... dangerous toward the Southwest: and two or three leagues within the entrance it beginneth to waxe wider and wider: and it seemeth to bee as it were an arme of the Sea: And I thinke that the same runneth into the Sea of Cathay,(28) for it sendeth foorth there a great current, and there doth runne in that place a terrible rase or tyde. (M197) And here the riuer from the North shore to the South shore is not past foure leagues in breadth, and it is a dangerous passage betweene both the lands, because there lie ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... Peru with its riches; he saw fabled Cathay; he saw the uttermost isles of the distant sea. His imagination took the wings of the morning and soared over worlds and countries that no one but he had ever dreamed of, all to be the fiefs of the King of Castile. It is interesting to note that it must have been ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... is always in a rage. And this lady is Angelica, Empress of Cathay; she wears a crown and will die this evening. This is her husband, Medoro; he is a black man and wears a crown; he will perish to-night by ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... question, if we may believe the report of certain Genoese, and other folk that have been in those regions, there dwelt of yore in the parts of Cathay one Nathan, a man of noble lineage and incomparable wealth. Who, having a seat hard by a road, by which whoso would travel from the West eastward, or from the East westward, must needs pass, and being magnanimous ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... into which the child was born was very different to the one in which we live. Europe was known, and northern Africa, and western Asia; but to the east stretched the fabulous country of the Grand Khan, Cathay, Cipango, and farthest Ind; while to the west rolled the Sea of Darkness, ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... fifty thousand dollars. He can afford it, but as he says, it's war times and money is scarce as brunette chorus girls. He has put the matter before the District Attorney and is going to sail for Far Cathay until they round up the gang. These criminals are so clumsy nowadays, I imagine it will be an easy task, don't ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... blazed great splashes and characters of the red of jasper framed in black. Toward the front Nature had tried heavy black stippling, but it clouded the pattern and she had given it up in order that I might think of Egypt and Cathay. ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... day we shall be lions and eagles and bold prophets! Then our tongue shall taste much beside India and Cathay!" ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... God; come, heavenly thrill! We wait thy coming,—and we will. The world is vast, and very far Its utmost verge and boundaries are; But thou hast kept thy word to-day In India and in dim Cathay, And the same mighty care shall reach Each humblest rock-pool of this beach. The gasping fish, the stranded keel, This dull dry soul of mine, shall feel Thy freshening touch, and, satisfied, Shall drink the fulness of ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... meek-eyed sons of far Cathay Are welcome round the board; Not greed, nor malice drives away These ...
— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper
... leave the fierce energy of the Northmen westwards and turn to another energy, which was leading men toward the east, to the lands beyond the Euphrates, to India, across central Asia, even into far Cathay. ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... said Edith, who suddenly bethought herself that Cathay and Cipango were the old names for China and Japan. This had been part of her history lesson a few days ago. ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... adventured for, who shall say, Nor yet what our port might be?— A magical city of old Cathay, Or a castle of Muscovy, With our atheist bo'sun, Bill, Black Bill, Under the swinging Bear, Whistling at night for a seaman to ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... shrewd contemporaries of Ariosto and Tasso. The inhabitants of Tasso's world of romance are pale chivalric unrealities, lifeless as Spenser's half-allegoric knights and ladies; those of Pulci's Ardenne forests and Cathay deserts are buffoons such as Florentine shopmen may have trapped out for their amusement in rusty armour and garlands of sausages. The only lifelike heroes and heroines are those of Ariosto. And they are most untragic, unromantic. The men are occasionally small scoundrels, but unintentionally ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... passage south of Virginia, cast anchor outside of Sandy Hook, September 3, 1609, and on the 11th passed up through the Narrows into the present bay of New York. Under the firm conviction that he was on his way to the long-sought Cathay, a day later he entered the Hudson River, where now stands the proud metropolis of America. As the Half-Moon ascended the river the water lost its saltness, and by the time they were anchored where the city of Albany now stands all hopes of Cathay ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... Ages, with her groping Douma; in Persia, from which young Shuster was so recently driven for trying to give to a people a sense of national self-respect; in India, where an Emperor moves a national capital to pacify submerged discontent; and even in far Cathay, the mystery land of Marco Polo, immobile, phlegmatic, individualistic China, men have been waging war for the philosophy incorporated in the first ten lines of our ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... had recently entered the parlor. "Stretching from South Park to Black Point, and running back to the Mission Dolores and the Presidio, we are building up a metropolis, sir, worthy to be placed beside the Golden Gate that opens to the broad Pacific and the shores of far Cathay! When the Pacific Railroad is built we shall be the natural terminus ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... we found one,—for 'tis soon to find In thousand-isled Cathay another isle,— For one short noon its treasures filled the mind, And then again we yearned, and ceased to smile. And so it was from isle to isle we passed, Like wanton bees or boys on flowers or lips; And when that all ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... hated rival the glories and profits of the New World. He would fain have his share of the prize; and Verrazzano, with four ships, was despatched to seek out a passage westward to the rich kingdom of Cathay. ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... through Venice the good citizens crowded to their house, all eager to embrace and welcome the far-travelled men and to pay them homage. "The young men came daily to visit and converse with the ever polite and gracious Messer Marco, and to ask him questions about Cathay and the Great Can, all which he answered with such kindly courtesy that every man felt himself in a manner his debtor." But when he talked of the Great Khan's immense wealth, and of other treasures accumulated in Eastern ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... some species of food it would at once have revealed itself, but these packages suggested something more important. What could they be? Were there treasures inside—jewels, or golden ornaments from some Moorish seraglio, or strange coin from far Cathay? ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... go through the formality of requesting an interview with this high official. These audiences were always promptly granted and were conducted with a great amount of pomp and ceremony very dear to the inhabitants of "far Cathay," but exceedingly tiresome to others. Some distance from us, and in another quarter of the city, was a large building called Examination Hall, used by the natives exclusively in connection with the civil service of the government. It was divided into small rooms, each of which was large enough ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... the last of the old routes to the East, finally failed the Christian world. Yet even beyond the fame of the East, which tradition had brought down from Greek and Roman, much more had the crusaders kindled for Asia (Cathay) and its riches an ardor not ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... of the mainland of North America, Sebastian Cabot, under the patronage of Henry VII, planned a voyage to the north pole, thinking that would be the best route to ancient Cathay. He proceeded only as far as Davis Strait; then, becoming discouraged by the immense fields of ice, he turned the prow ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... Konkanasths had settled in India long before the Parsis. Moreover, India and Persia had been connected by commercial treaties. Cosmas Indicopleustes (545) found some Persians amongst the principal traders settled along the coasts of the Indian Ocean (Migne, Patrologiae Cursus, lxxxviii. 446; Yule, Cathay, 1, clxxvii.-clxxix.), and his assertion as to the existence of a Persian bishop at the head of the Christian communities of Kalyan (Yule, Cathay, 1, clxxi.), discloses close relations between Thana and the Persian Gulf. Shortly after the time of Cosmas, the empire of the seas passed from ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... I have just now said was called Juana, I proceeded along its coast toward the west for some distance. I found it so large and without perceptible end, that I believed it to be not an island, but the continental country of Cathay;[11] seeing, however, no towns or cities situated on the sea-coast, but only some villages and rude farms, with whose inhabitants I was unable to converse, because as soon as they saw us they took flight, I proceeded farther, thinking that I would discover some ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... fevered with the sunset, I am fretful with the bay, For the wander-thirst is on me And my soul is in Cathay. ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... son Sebastian tried Henry again. England might still be able to secure a slice. This time Henry VII. listened. Two small ships were fitted out at Bristol, crossed the Atlantic, discovered Newfoundland, coasted down to Florida looking for a passage to Cathay, but could not find one. The elder Cabot died; the younger came home. The expedition failed, and no interest had ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... men owned thy sway From Lapland to Cathay; In heaven the Milky Way thy might confessed: Weaklings we saw become Strong, thanks to thee and rum, And Punch of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... as written down at Marco's dictation, became one of the most popular works of the Middle Ages. In this book Europe read of far Cathay (China), with its wealth, its huge cities, and swarming population, of mysterious and secluded Tibet, of Burma, Siam, and Cochin- China, with their palaces and pagodas, of the East Indies, famed for spices, of Ceylon, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... led to no immediate practical results. The Bristol ships brought back no rich cargoes of gold or silver or spices, to tell England that she had won a passage to the Indies and Cathay. The idea, however, that a short passage would be discovered to those rich regions was to linger for nearly two centuries in the minds of maritime adventurers ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... the Isles of Greece, and, at last, in 1453, Constantinople itself, fell into their hands. The Eastern Empire, the last survival of the Empire of the Romans, perished beneath the sword of Mahomet. Then the pathway by land to Asia, to the fabled empires of Cathay and Cipango, was blocked by the Turkish conquest. Commerce, however, remained alert and enterprising, and men's minds soon turned to the hopes of a western passage which should provide a new route ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... with sleepless zeal What course may best the state beseem, And, fearful for the City's weal, Weigh'st anxiously each hostile scheme That may be hatching far away In Scythia, India, or Cathay. ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... "thought that over the hills lay the western ocean and the road to Cathay. I do not know, but I am confident that but a little way west we should come to water. A great river or else ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... these so numerously as to compel contrast with the severer tastes of later ages. Some of these magatama—curved jewels or perforated cylinders—were made of very hard stone which requires skill to drill, cut and polish. Among the substances used was jade, a mineral found only in Cathay.[3] Indeed, we cannot follow the lines of industry and manufactures, of personal adornment and household decoration, of scientific terms and expressions, of literary, intellectual and religious experiment, without ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... a lengthy description of a tournament at the court of Charlemagne, whither knights from all parts of the globe hasten to distinguish themselves in the lists. Chief among these foreign guests are Argalio and Angelica, son and daughter of the king of Cathay, with their escort of four huge giants. The prince is, moreover, fortunate possessor of a magic lance, one touch of which suffices to unhorse any opponent, while the princess, by means of an enchanted ring, can detect and frustrate any spell, or become ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... customs of any people I ever met with." Surely this is vague enough for even the clerk who kept the log-book of Henry Hudson. Such items as the following were deemed "food" for books of travels in those days: "The people of Cathay, in China, believe that they are the only people in the world who have two eyes. To the Latins they allow one, and all the rest of the world none ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... wonders, fair Cathay, Who long hast shunned the staring day, Hid in mists of poet's dreams By thy blue and yellow streams,— Let us thy shadowed form behold,— Teach us as thou ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... away plucking out his beard, and crying: Oh, Fo! Oh, Pe! Oh, Le! and all the monosyllabic and circumflex gods of Cathay, take pity on your people; for, there has come to us an Emperor of the English school, and I see very plainly that, in a little while, we shall be in want of everything, since it will not be necessary ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... end of his historie de gestis Romanorum recordeth as a wonderfull miracle, that the Seres, (which I take to be the people of Cathay, or China) sent ambassadors to Rome, to intreate friedship, as moued with the fame of the maiesty of the Romane Empire. And haue not we as good cause to admire, that the Kings of the Moluccs and Iaua maior, haue desired the fauour of her maiestie, and the commerce & traffike ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... part iv th' place wanst crowded be Hendricks an' McDonald, does justice to th' richness iv thim islands. They raise unknown quantities iv produce, none iv which forchnitly can come into this counthry. All th' riches iv Cathay, all th' wealth iv Ind, as Hogan says, wud look like a second morgedge on an Apache wickeyup compared with th' untold an' almost unmintionable products iv that gloryous domain. Me business kept me in Manila or I wud tell ye what they are. Besides some ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... launching them on voyages across the cove, with the feather of a sea-gull for a sail. If the voice of ages tell me true, this is as wise an occupation as to build ships of five hundred tons, and launch them forth upon the main, bound to "far Cathay." Yet, how would the ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... devil had just whispered to her, "You were a vestal virgin doubtless—oh, severely chaste!"... She said, "You believe then we have come up through 'a cycle of Cathay'?" ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... hast eaten; peacock's tongues,—fed thy carp with slaves,— Nests of Asiatic birds, brought from far Cathay, Umbrian boars, and mullet roes snatched from stormy waves; Half thy father's lands have gone one strange meal to pay; For a morsel on thy plate ravished sea and shore; Thou hast eaten—'tis enough, ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... century is one of stupendous Transitions because the time was ripe; and not simply because printing was invented, or Greek scholars were driven from Constantinople to scatter abroad in Europe, or Ferdinand and Isabella wanted a direct route to Cathay, or Friar Martin nailed ninety-five Theses to the door of Wittenberg's church, and built himself thereby an everlasting ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... I followed its coast to the westward, and found it so large that I thought it must be the mainland,—the province of Cathay; and as I found neither towns nor villages on the sea-coast, but only a few hamlets, with the inhabitants of which I could not hold conversation because they all immediately fled, I kept on the same ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... there is a harbor, we have lighted it with an American sail. We have bound the Atlantic to the Mississippi, so that we drift from the sea to the prairie upon a cloud of vapor; and we are stretching one hand across the continent to fulfil the hope of Columbus in a shorter way to Cathay, and with the other we are grasping under the sea to clasp there the hand of the old continent, that so the throbbing of the ocean may not toss us further apart, but be as the beating of one ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... could choose an hour of wakefulness out of the whole night it would be this. Since your sober bed-time, at eleven, you have had rest enough to take off the pressure of yesterday's fatigue; while before you till the sun comes from "far Cathay" to brighten your window there is almost the space of a summer night; one hour to be spent in thought, with the mind's eye half shut, and two in pleasant dreams, and two in that strangest of enjoyments, the forgetfulness alike of joy and ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... on the opposing continent. And, borne on spirit-plumed wings, let fancy soar far from that sunless clime, to the warm South, where soft skies slumber through the cloudless noon, o'er the gold palaces of fair Cathay. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... course—why, to be sure—we'll send him anywhere that thou dost say, Golden-heart: to Persia or Cathay—ay, to the far side of the green-cheese moon, or to the court of Tamburlaine the Great," and he laughed a quick, dry, nervous laugh that had no laughter in it. "I had one of De Lannoy's red Bohemian bottles, Nick," he rattled on feverishly; ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... visited the Far East. They brought back to Europe silks and spices, and ornaments of gold and of silver. They told marvelous tales of rich lands and great princes. One of these travelers was a Venetian named Marco Polo. He told of Cathay or China and of Cipango or Japan. This last country was an island. Its king was so rich that even the floors of his palaces were of pure gold. Suddenly the Turks conquered the lands between Europe and ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... Paolo Toscanelli, definitely encouraged the conviction Columbus had formed from his reading of Marco Polo's descriptions of Cipango, Cathay, and the Grand Khan, that the lands might be reached by sailing west, and there was doubtless little the ancients had written concerning the existence of islands and continents lying beyond the Pillars of Hercules with which he ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... contemplated a visit to the new world. She was familiar with the history of the Dutch West India Company, a political movement organized under cover of finding a passage to Cathay, to destroy the results of Spanish conquest ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... by a hole in the handle to a pin on the gunwale. She was also provided with a sail hoisting on a spar that fitted in amidships. The sail was laced vertically: a point, by the way, for telling a Japanese junk from a Chinese one at sea, for Cathay always ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... was told, was rich, but Spain was richer. Its soil was as fertile as that of Syria, its climate as mild and sweet as that of Araby the Blest. The far-famed mines of distant Cathay did not equal it in wealth of minerals and gems; nowhere else were such harbors, nowhere such highlands and plains. The mountain-ranges, beautiful to see, enclosed valleys of inexhaustible fertility. It was a land "plentiful in waters, ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... in 1511 led to its exploration; but geographers could only slowly appreciate what the islands really meant, for they were as much misled by the reports of navigators as Columbus had been by his prejudice in favor of Cathay. ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... poured forth from the windows of heaven, inviting the living babies of all present mankind to find life and health in its luxurious enfolding? She saw the sun climb the skies with imperious magnificence, and whispering voices from remote Cathay tempered the radiance of the day with memories ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... nation's life and development has been concentrated within the last four years than would occupy fifty years of Europe or a "cycle of Cathay" in ordinary times. It has borne sorrows and losses which would have been overwhelming had it been known beforehand how great they would be; the call for tremendous efforts for which it was totally unprepared has been answered with steady ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... pass by desert. But it is not the great Babylon in the land and in the power of the said soldan, but it is in the power and the lordship of Persia, but he holdeth it of the great Chan, that is the greatest emperor and the most sovereign lord of all the parts beyond, and he is lord of the isles of Cathay and of many other isles and of a great part of Ind, and his land marcheth unto Prester John's Land, and he holdeth so much land, that he knoweth not the end: and he is more mighty and greater lord without ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... creation; and we remember that in this respect he compared the Homeric Achilles with the Angelica of Ariosto. Her only he regarded as an idealisation in the Orlando Furioso. And certainly in the luxury and excess of her all-conquering beauty, which drew after her from 'ultimate Cathay' to the camps of the baptised in France, and back again, from the palace of Charlemagne, drew half the Paladins, and 'half Spain militant,' to the portals of the rising sun; that sovereign beauty which (to say nothing of kings and princes withered ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... me, my pippy.' 'Oh! Whither away? To the land of Cathay?' 'But no; to the far Mississippi, Where a beautiful Queen hath sway, Who has stolen my heart away.' 'I am yours! And the bounty?' 'What you will: ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... before them like a morning in far Cathay, and they stepped off down the street toward the Old South Church, which had been omitted from uncle Ezra's scheme of entertainment by reason of difficulty in leaving the horse. The discovery that the door would not be open for nearly ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett |
