"Cathay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... basin, and its 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
... exquisite surface of Orient idols! O, hewn by the workmen of cunning Cathay For the sword-hilts of kings and their saddles and bridles! O, carved for Athene! O, chosen to-day For the match now proceeding Betwixt those two leading And infantile billiard ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... 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
... 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
... Turks swept westward. Arabia, Syria, 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 to ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... Phillips, of Rolls Alley, Rolls Lane, Great Gardens, Temple Parish (who is sister to that Richard Phillips who was sexton at Redcliff Church in the year 1772), she informed me that his widow and a daughter were living in Cathay; the widow is sexton, a Mr. Perrin, of Colston's Parade, acting for her. She remembers Chatterton having been at his father's school, and that he always called Richard Phillips, her brother, 'uncle,' and was much liked by him. He liked him for his spirit, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... If there 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 ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... come to Venice and lay his plans before the Signiory. The conference of Badajoz took up his time in 1524, and on the 4th of March 1525 he was appointed commander of an expedition fitted out at Seville "to discover the Moluccas, Tarsis, Ophir, Cipango and Cathay." ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... in 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 ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... said Grey, "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 ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... of great unknown lands, and vague reports amongst mariners of driftwood seen on the seas. But at any rate we know that he arrived at a fixed conclusion that there was a way by the west to the Indies; that he could discover this way, and so come to Cipango, Cathay, the Grand Khan, and all he had met with in the gorgeous descriptions of Marco Polo and other ancient authorities. We may not pretend to lay down the exact chronological order of the formation of the idea in his mind, in fact, to know more about it than he would probably ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... report. Beyond Lake St Louis stretched a mysterious world, through the midst of which flowed the Great River. For an explorer and a patriot the opportunity was priceless. The acquisition of vast territory for the French crown, the enlargement of the trade zone, the discovery of a route to Cathay, the prospect of Arcadian joys and exciting adventures—beside such promptings hardship and danger became negligible. And when exploring the wilderness Champlain was in full command. {85} Off the coast of Norumbega his wishes, as geographer, had been subject to the special projects ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... illustrated by this word, tea. While to one person it may suggest only refreshment and personal comfort, and to another, scenes of home life, to still others it will bring into being all that the dreamer has read or heard of China, that land of Cathay, and of its slant-eyed, mild mannered wearers of the pig-tail, and their real or fabulous characteristics. Not the least interesting of such associations are memories of the queer manners and habits of the Chinese people, some of which to us outside barbarians, ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... 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 continually finding that the Japanese ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... 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 woe. The moment of rising belongs to ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... a 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... these watches, some genuine enough and many spurious. They were made the vogue centuries ago by the clever Jesuit priests, when the first disciples of Loyola to come to China were playing for kingly stakes in the capital of Cathay, and were not ashamed to use any means which the ingenuity might discover to delight the Manchu rulers of that day. Many of the most beautiful watches in France, with amorous paintings of the most voluptuous kind decorating the inside case, were brought to Peking and distributed ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... them—but Cyril and Fanny. There had been "something" between them which had changed the whole world to them last summer. They would never entirely outlive and forget it—not though Fanny went to far Cathay and married, not one, but half a dozen of Nabobs. For she was going to obey her father, and give herself to the first eligible bidder for her hand. No doubt she would do it with set lips, blanched face, and great black eyes looking not only twice as large as their natural size, but hollow and ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... 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
... 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 ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... tipplings, each mother's son retired on board his own 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 ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... inclined to him and she said, 'Verily, thou conjurest me with a mighty conjuration, O accursed one! Nevertheless, I will not let thee go, till thou tell me whence thou comest at this hour.' 'O princess,' answered he, 'know that I come from the uttermost end of the land of Cathay and from among the islands, and I will tell thee of a wonderful thing I have seen this night. If thou find my words true, let me go my way and write me a patent under thy hand that I am thy freedman, so none of the Jinn, whether of the air or the ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... crown of France, in which he displayed very noble and great courage in undertaking such an unknown voyage with only one ship, which was a caravel of hardly— tons, with only fifty men, with the intention, if possible, of discovering Cathay, taking a course through other climates than those the Portuguese use in reaching it by the way of Calicut, but going towards the northwest and north, entirely believing that, although Ptolemy, Aristotle ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... 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 ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... Both these woods are of great price, but especially the Calambuco, which is rubbed in the hands, yielding an agreeable fragrance; the agila does so when burned." See Crawfurd, ut supra, pp. 6, 7, and Yule's Cathay, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... man's race, To Thee, O Jove, the Fates assign Our Caesar's charge; his power and place Be next to Thine. Whether the Parthian, threatening Rome, His eagles scatter to the wind, Or follow to their eastern home Cathay and Ind, Thy second let him rule below: Thy car shall shake the realms above; Thy vengeful bolts shall ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... be traversed. The dreadful terrors of the straits that separate 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 and more direct way be found towards the eastern empires. This was by way of the northern ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... the time in the records of that town; how still stranger that Columbus never knew that he had discovered a new continent, but believed that, as he had originally intended, he had reached the shores of the Indies and China or Cathay by a new route, and therefore gave them the name which has ever since attached to the islands where he first landed, of the West Indies, and called the natives, Indians; and, strangest of all, that four hundred and six years after he first landed at San Salvador, the remains ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... pinnace, of from 7 to 10 tons! The aggregate of the crews of the three ships was only thirty-five, men and boys. Think of the daring of these early navigators in attempting to pass by the North Pole to Cathay through snow, and storm, and ice, in such miserable little cockboats! The pinnace was lost; the Michael, under Owen Griffith, a Welsh-man, deserted; and Martin Frobisher in the Gabriel went alone ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... water, for it is said that the length of the Rukh chick's wing, when he cometh forth of the egg, is a thousand fathoms. The folk marvelled at this quill, when they saw it, and the man who was called Abd al-Rahman the Moor (and he was known, to boot, as the Chinaman, for his long sojourn in Cathay), related to them the following adventure, one of many of his traveller's tales of marvel. He was on a voyage in the China seas—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... inconsistency in her conduct that jarred upon his own simple directness. "You know 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 ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte |
