Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 18, 2025
We might linger with profit over the elaborate models of Chinese manufactures sugar, rice, tobacco, paper, etc., showing the stages of cultivation, manufacture, and packing for transportation and market but perhaps it will be as well to slip across the alley and visit the ancient island of Zipango.
Japan, under the name of Zipango, took its place on the map of the world some time before Columbus discovered, unwittingly to himself, that a continent intervened between Western Europe and Eastern Asia.
Zipango, Nipon, Japon, have one consistent syllabic element, and the rulers of the country are so desirous that it should take its place among the civilized nations of the world that they have not shown to any liberal extent the native machinery, except in the form of models which attract but little attention, a few machines for winding and measuring silk, some curious articles of bamboo and ratan, fishpots and baskets, and cutlery of native shapes.
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. For almost two thousand years, East and West developed away one from the other.
The globe of Martin Behaim at that time depicted Zipango as off the coast of Asia and near the longitude actually occupied by the Carolinas and Florida, the eastward extension of Asia being fearfully exaggerated. The globe of John Schöner, of 1520, fourteen years after the death of Columbus, had Zipango in the same place, and Cuba alongside of it, ranging north and south.
I saw a possibility of exploring the far Indian realms, the shores of farthest Cathay and the famed Zipango of Marco Polo. Before entering on this new sphere of experiences, however, it was necessary for me to visit Italy, Germany, and England. I sailed from Messina to Leghorn, and travelled thence, by way of Florence, Venice, and the Tyrol, to Munich.
As in European literature Cathay became China, and Zipango or Xipangu was recognized as Japan, so also the curiosities, the artistic fabrics, the strange things from the ends of the earth, soon became familiar in Europe. Besides the traffic in mercantile commodities, there were exchanges of words.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking