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The writer was the first to describe China, or Cathay, in its vastness of territory, its wonderfully rich and populous cities, and the first to tell of Tartary, Thibet, Burmah, Siam, Cochin-China, the Indian Archipelago, the Andaman Islands, of Java and Sumatra, of the fabled island of Cipangu, or Japan, of Hindustan, and that marvellous region which the world learned to know as Farther India.
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 burnt her powder for fireworks, not for firearms.
And wit well, that the king of that isle is so mighty, that he hath many times overcome the great Chan of Cathay in battle, that is the most great emperor that is under the firmament either beyond the sea or on this half.
Read a book called "Two Heroes of Cathay," by Luella Miner, and see how our country has treated some of these people in the past, and then you see them so fond of America and of Americans and you realize that in some ways they are ahead of us in what used to be known as Christianity before the war.
Never again could he undertake a voyage of discovery, for he was now a confirmed invalid. Cipango, Cathay, and "the strait" to the Indian Ocean were not for him; so it was with many a heartburn that his poor old eyes strained toward the fading islands. His ill luck held out to the end. The first day a sudden storm broke with a crash and carried away his masts.
Its seat of power commands both Europe and Cathay. On the north is slowly building a great people, developing a dominion as imperial as our own. The same speech and blood of kinship make certain the ultimate union with our vital brothers across our northern frontier.
From Cathay, from the tropical coasts of Africa, and from farthest Ind, came every drug, spice, or plant, every valuable jewel, every costly fabric, that human ingenuity had discovered or created.
Two days after this I entered Waterton. There was another road, said to be a very pleasant one, which lay to the westward, and which would have taken me to Walford through a country new to me, but I wished to make no further explorations in Cathay, and if one journeys back upon a road by which he came he will find the scenery very different.
These voyages of Behring, however, belong to a much later stage of discovery than those we have hitherto been treating for the last three chapters. His explorations were undertaken mainly for scientific purposes, and to solve a scientific problem, whereas all the other researches of Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Dutch were directed to one end, that of reaching the Spice Islands and Cathay.
The Indies and Cathay are full of gold and jewels; Columbus will bring you home shiploads of treasures. Spain has conquered the Moors; Columbus will help you conquer Cathay. In fact, they talked to Queen Isabella so strongly and so earnestly, that she, too, became excited over this chance for glory and riches that she had almost lost, Quick! send for Columbus. Call him back! she said.
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