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Updated: May 2, 2025
Zipangu is an island in the Eastern Ocean, situated at the distance of about fifteen hundred miles from the mainland, or coast of Manji. It is of considerable size; its inhabitants have fair complexions, are well made, and are civilized in their manners. Their religion is the worship of idols. They are independent of every foreign power, and governed only by their own kings.
But even without the maps the calculation which he had made of the length of the known world tended to shorten the distance between Portugal and Farther India by 2500 miles. As the Greek geographers had somewhat under-estimated the whole circuit of the globe, it would thus seem that Zipangu was not more than 4000 miles to the west of Portugal.
Finding these all abandoned, but with their colors flying, they instantly seized them, and pushing off from the island, stood for the principal city of Zipangu, into which, from the appearance of the colors, they were suffered to enter unmolested. Here they found few of the inhabitants, besides women, whom they retained for their own use, and drove out all others.
There are many merchants and artisans, but the masters do not work, they employ servants to do all their labor. The province of Mangi was conquered by the Great Khan, who divided it into nine kingdoms, appointing to each a tributary king. He drew from it an immense revenue, for the country abounded in gold, silver, silks, sugar, spices, and perfumes. Zipangu, Zifangri, or Cipango.
It is as large as all the Azores or Canary Islands or Cape de Verde Islands put together; its southern tip just touches the equator, and it lies about half-way between the Cape de Verde Islands and Zipangu or Japan, which was then believed to lie on the other side of the Atlantic. Mr.
Going on from there he discovered the island of Cuba, which he believed to be the mainland of Asia, and then Haiti, which he mistook for the longed-for Zipangu. Although he made three later expeditions and sailed down the coast of South America as far as the Orinoco, he died without realizing that he had not been exploring the coast of Asia.
To him the vision, dimly seen through the scanty and inaccurate knowledge of his age, imaged a close and facile communication, by means of the sea, that great bond of nations, between two ancient and diverse civilizations, which centred, the one around the Mediterranean, the birthplace of European commerce, refinement, and culture, the other upon the shores of that distant Eastern Ocean which lapped the dominions of the Great Khan, and held upon its breast the rich island of Zipangu.
The people belonging to them, by floating on pieces of the wreck, saved themselves upon an island lying about four miles from the coast of Zipangu.
The idols in Zipangu and the adjoining islands are strangely made, some having the head of a bull, others of a hog, or a dog, and in other most monstrous fashions. Some have heads with four faces, others three heads on one neck, while some have faces on their shoulders.
This island was an object of diligent search to Columbus. About the island of Zipangu or Cipango, and between it and the coast of Mangi, the sea, according to Marco Polo, is studded with small islands to the number of seven thousand four hundred and forty, of which the greater part are inhabited.
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