<p>Excerpt from The Romance of Discovery: A Thousand Years of Exploration and the Unveiling of ContinentsIN this four hundredth anniversary year of John Cabot's landfall in North America, I have written, at the request of my publishers, this book entitled The Romance of Discovery. It is intended to be the first of a series of three works in illustration of American history. The second volume will deal with the romance of colonization. The third will tell the story of American victories in war and diplomacy.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.</p>

The Romance of Discovery: A Thousand Years of Exploration and the Unveiling of Continents (Classic Reprint)

History

Griffis, William Elliot

Americas

Forgotten Books

The Lily Among Thorns: A Study of the Biblical Drama Entitled, the Song of Songs

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Franklin Classics

Corea, the Hermit Nation

Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks

Dutch Fairy Tales For Young Folks

Europe

The story of New Netherland, the Dutch in America

The Story of New Netherland, the Dutch in America

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 edition. Excerpt: ...The females are not usually sent away from the place of their parents or their own crime. In ancient times of Kokorai and Korai there were only two classes of people, the nobles and their free retainers, and the serfs or slaves. The nobles were lords of cities and castles, like the daimios of Japan, and were very numerous. The whole country was owned by them, or at least held in the king's name under tenure of military service--a lien which length of time only strengthened. In the long centuries of peace, many of these old families--weakly descendants of vigorous founders--have died out, and the land reverting to the sovereign, or possessed by the people, is now owned by a more numerous and complex class, while nearly all the cities and towns are governed by officers sent out by the central authority at Seoul. The ancient class of serfs has, by industry and intelligence and accumulation of rights vested in their special occupations, developed into the various middle classes. The nobles are now in a minority, though at present their power is on the increase, and their ancestral landholds comprise but a small portion of the soil. As in medireval Europe, so in Corea, where feudalism, which rests on personal loyalty to a reigning sovereign, or a particular royal line, prevails, a more or less complete revolution of titles and possessions takes place upon a change of dynasty. On the accession of the present royal house in 1392, the old Korai nobility were impoverished and the partisans of the founder of the Ni, and all who had aided him to the throne, became at once the nobility of the kingdom, and were rewarded by gifts of land. To the victors belonged the spoils. The honors, riches, and the exclusive right to fill many of the most desirable public...

Corea the Hermit Nation

Asia

Ams Pr Inc

Japanese Fairy World

From Preface:  "The thirty-four stories included within this volume do not illustrate the bloody, revengeful or licentious elements, with which Japanese popular, and juvenile literature is saturated. These have been carefully avoided. It is also rather with a view to the artistic, than to the literary, products of the imagination of Japan, that the selection has been made. From my first acquaintance, twelve years ago, with Japanese youth, I became an eager listener to their folk lore and fireside stories. When later, during a residence of nearly four years among the people, my eyes were opened to behold the wondrous fertility of invention, the wealth of literary, historic and classic allusion, of pun, myth and riddle, of heroic, wonder, and legendary lore in Japanese art, I at once set myself to find the source of the ideas expressed in bronze and porcelain, on lacquered cabinets, fans, and even crape paper napkins and tidies. Sometimes I discovered the originals of the artist's fancy in books, sometimes only in the mouths of the people and professional story-tellers. Some of these stories I first read on the tattooed limbs and bodies of the native foot-runners, others I first saw in flower-tableaux at the street floral shows of Tokio. Within this book the[Pg iv] reader will find translations, condensations of whole books, of interminable romances, and a few sketches by the author embodying Japanese ideas, beliefs and superstitions. I have taken no more liberty, I think, with the native originals, than a modern story-teller of Tokio would himself take, were he talking in an American parlor, instead of at his bamboo-curtained stand in Yanagi Cho, (Willow Street,) in the mikado's capital. Some of the stories have appeared in English before, but most of them are printed for the first time. A few reappear from The Independent and other periodicals. The illustrations and cover-stamp, though engraved in New York by Mr. Henry W. Troy, were, with one exception, drawn especially for this work, by my artist-friend, Ozawa Nankoku, of Tokio. The picture of Yorimasa, the Archer, was made for me by one of my students in Tokio. Hoping that these harmless stories that have tickled the imagination of Japanese children during untold generations, may amuse the big and little folks of America, the writer invites his readers, in the language of the native host as he points to the chopsticks and spread table, O agari nasai"

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Japan in History: Folk Lore and Art

Arts & Photography

Wentworth Press

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