"Coolie" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at three o'clock that morning in total darkness riding in four coolie sedan chairs, one on each side of the chair. In going such a long distance it was necessary to have two relays of chair coolies. This meant twenty-four coolies for the three chairs, not counting an extra coolie for each chair who acted as a sort of head chair bearer. Besides this ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... in a saffron face, fixed alternately upon the speakers, with an appraising grimace but half-veiled. And as he sipped his grenadine syrup and soda water, he admired his three-inch thumbnail, the token of his rise from the estate of a half-naked coolie in Quan-tung to equality with these Taipans, the whites of Tahiti. He may or may not have known what rumors there were, but wanting the good-will of all influential residents in his widening scheme for money-making, he tried to soften the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... necessary implements; others are clad in head-and-shoulder pieces and gauntlets of light chain-armour, to protect them while pulling down and unroofing houses, which is their especial duty. All have a regular fire costume, from the 'Oki Yaconin,' or 'head man,' to the bare-legged coolie, who carries the badge of the brigade in large red characters on his back. On arriving at a fire, a point de tete is selected—generally a house, on the roof of which the fire-charms are immediately fixed, as if to forbid its further advance. These charms (the circular white objects with ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... the legislation adopted with a view to check the evils connected with advances. In order to prove the necessity for further legislation an old planter once printed an account of a case which he took up against a defaulting coolie. His description of the hunt, and the wiles of the defaulting labourer in moving from one part of the country to another, was positively amusing, and showed conclusively that it did not pay to attempt to catch a defaulting labourer. ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... artifice, but with an elective sureness of knowledge. The story of Tukang Burok's love, related in the old man's own words, conveys the very breath of Malay thought and speech. In "His Little Bill," the coolie, Lim Teng Wah, facing his debtor, stands very distinct before us, an insignificant and tragic victim of fate with whom he had quarrelled to the death over a matter of seven dollars and sixty-eight cents. The story of "The Schooner with a Past" may be heard, ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... formed a distinct class of the population, and numbered about five percent of it. It was distinct from the Ku-Li (coolie) or common people, and from the "Ki-Ling" or aristocracy composed of those more energetic men (at least mentally more energetic) who were the active or retired executive heads of the various industrial, ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... Potato King of Stockton. I know him well. I've had more large deals with him and made less money than with any man I know. He was only a coolie, and he smuggled himself into the United States twenty years ago. Started at day's wages, then peddled vegetables in a couple of baskets slung on a stick, and after that opened up a store in Chinatown in San Francisco. But he had a head on him, and he was soon onto the curves of the Chinese ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... numbers and incessant activity give the place very much the appearance of a town in China. The Chinese merchant is generally a fat round-faced man with an important and business-like look. He wears the same style of clothing (loose white smock, and blue or black trousers) as the meanest coolie, but of finer materials, and is always clean and neat; and his long tail tipped with red silk hangs down to his heels. He has a handsome warehouse or shop in town and a good house in the country. He keeps a fine horse and gig, and every evening may ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... is a good practice to take a few books and dictionary of any foreign language you may wish to be learning." Again, his character as a thoughtful man may be seen in the warning he gives novices against ill-treating villagers, or allowing the shikaris to do so. "Shouting and cursing at a coolie already dumbfoundered at the very sight of a white man is not the way to clear his understanding." His remark that native servants under cover of their master's prestige will frequently tyrannise over the ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... her answer came. He carried her letter out to a favourite haunt of his in a sunny coolie where an old creek-bed was marked by straggling willows, and there, throwing himself down upon the sloping grass, he ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... governor merely informed the headman that he was to produce ten rupees per house from his village. The villagers then appointed assessors from among themselves, and decided how much each household should pay. Thus a coolie might pay but four rupees, and a rice-merchant as much as fifty or sixty. The assessment was levied according to the means of the villagers. So well was this done, that complaints against the decisions of the assessors were almost ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... A coolie made a lunge at her. With closed fist Page Hanaford struck him full in the face; the other arm shielded Zura. Another man spat at her, and met the fate of his brother from Page's well-directed blow. There is nothing so ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... by his God," he said, "to eject the free American labor from the coal regions and to substitute importations of coolie Huns and Bohemians. Thus, the wicked American laborers will be chastened for trying to get higher wages and cut down a pious man's dividends; and the downtrodden coolies will be brought where they can enjoy the blessings of liberty and of ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... the unpronounceable place after much prayer and fasting. What a day we had yesterday! We left the Lakserai Circuit House at 10 a.m., preceded by Autolycus and a crowd of coolies bearing luggage. Each coolie carries one thing, and as they are all paid the same without regard to the weight carried, of course there is great competition for the light packages. It is odd to see one man stagger under a trunk while another trots gaily off ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... at the hotel pay a contractor two dollars per month for food, they not being permitted to eat anything at the hotel. A coolie's board costs about five cents per day. For this he gets an abundance of coarse rice and cabbage spiced with pieces of dried fish and pickles, and upon such a diet lives from year to year. Clothing is estimated at two to three dollars per year. This is the country of low prices, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... and a coolie, both of whom looked exactly like any other guide and coolie, and having much to think out, and sure thinking being anything but a rapid process with him, also because he did not wish to draw too much ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... such circumstances. But he experted his mine, and found it absolutely worthless; explored the veldt on a second-hand bicycle, cooked little meals of bacon and mush wherever he found himself, and wrote to me. Meanwhile he learned much, studied the coolie question, investigated mine-workings, was entertained by his old college mates—mining experts themselves—in Johannesburg. There was the letter telling of the bull fight at Zanzibar, or Delagoa Bay, or some seafaring port thereabouts, that broke his heart, it was such a disappointment—"it ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... point onwards, seemed to imagine that he was talking at a coolie; coolie intercourse cultivates the faculty of expression wonderfully, and Reginald Hampton's host entertained that amused aeronaut for fully ten minutes with a wealth of epithet—very old in bottle, and of a fine tawny flavour. Hampton took advantage of the panting calm that followed ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... said Uncle Richard, turning sharply, and fixing him with his keen eyes, as he had often fixed some deceitful, shivering coolie, who had looked up to him in the past as master ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... considerations, it is from no narrow jealousy that we maintain that French preponderance in Madagascar would work disastrously for freedom and humanity in that part of the world. We are not wholly free from blame ourselves with regard to the treatment of the coolie population of Mauritius; but it must be remembered that, although that island is English in government, its inhabitants are chiefly French in origin, and they retain a great deal of that utter want of recognition of the rights of coloured people which seems inherent in the French abroad. ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... while Clutching Hand growled his approval as he opened the door and let out the Chinaman. Long Sin departed as stealthily as he had come, the frightful engine of destruction hugged up carefully under his wide-sleeved coolie shirt. ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... sanction.'[18] The importation of coolies raised old questions in new forms. The voyage from India was declared to reproduce the horrors of the middle passage of the vanished Guinea slavers; the condition of the coolie on the sugar plantations was drawn in a light only less lurid than the case of the African negro; and John Gladstone was again in hot water. Thomas Gladstone, his eldest son, defended him in parliament (Aug. 3, 1839), and commissioners sent to inquire ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Koran. Were it not for love of sensual indulgence, slavery would long ago have died a natural death. Over and over again has it been proved that voluntary service is far cheaper than enforced labour. An Indian coolie will work all day, and ask for little more than enough to keep body and soul together. This much the slave-owners are compelled to give to keep their slaves in health. Slaves are valuable property, and ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... may often be seen at some convenient point in a Chinese town, delighting large audiences of coolies with tales of love, and war, and heroism, and self-sacrifice. These readers do not read the actual words of the book, which no coolie would understand, but transpose the book-language into the colloquial as ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... Maldive Islands and to India, the produce of which they excel both in astringency and size. The fibrous wood of the areca being at once straight, firm, and elastic, is employed for making the pingoes (yokes for the shoulders), by means of which the Singhalese coolie, like the corresponding class among the ancient Egyptians and the Greeks, carries his burdens, dividing them into portions of equal weight, one of which is suspended from each end of the pingo. By a swaying motion communicated to them as he starts, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Again, but for Chinese coolie competition, [49] constant labour from the natives would have been almost unprocurable. The native day-labourer would work two or three days, and then suddenly disappear. The active Chinaman goes day after day to his task (excepting only at the time of the Chinese New Year, in ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... sorry for the sorrow I am sure Mr. Burke will feel for the loss of his brother, announced in Mr. Coolie's paper yesterday. Besides, he was a comic, good-humoured, entertaining man, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... he will let a better officer go on alone. The ruined tombs of forgotten Mussulman saints heard the ballad of Agra Town, The Buffalo Battery, Marching to Kabul, The long, long Indian Day, The Place where the Punkah-coolie died, and ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... is a long process at Labuan, first, because the ship lies so far from the shore, and next, because of the insufficiency of convenient boats, and the necessary coolie labour to put the coal on board, thus it took us two whole days to get in as many hundred tons. By the evening of the 14th however, we had cleared the islands, and shaped course for ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... be in these monuments of past events than the corresponding class of English labourers would have been. But on arrival we found there was no question of intelligent historical interest. The fact was that a poor coolie—who had just climbed up the Memorial Tower by the inner staircase—had fallen out of one of the windows described, and was lying on the marble floor below, at the far side from us, crushed and dying. We were told that an Englishman had, fortunately, been present, and had driven off at ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... to make out that golf is better than cricket, but was just saying what games a man can play without being sworn at as if he were a coolie," Ward said. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... alpen stock, a pass into Kashmir, and bag of money, and "voila tout." For carrying this baggage, I require two mules, and two Coolies, or when mules are not procurable, seven Coolies. Four other Coolies man my dandy, and these men are going all the way with me. Each Coolie receives four annas, or sixpence a day, and a mule costs eight annas. Stopped under a "pepel tree" and sent some Coolies up it for the fruit, which was ripe. This tree is the Indian fig, and the fruit is very small, not larger than ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... Everything looked most auspicious for the rearing of a wonderful cage-bred and cage-born chimpanzee, the second one ever born in captivity. Instead of carrying her infant astride her hip, as do orang mothers, and the coolie women of India, Suzette astonished us beyond measure by tucking it into her groin, between her thigh and her abdomen, head outward. It was a fine place,—warm and soft,—but not good when overdone! When Suzette walked, as she freely did, she held up the leg ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... I had suffered with appendicitis and during a meeting I was holding in company with Bro. Carl Arbeiter at Plum Coolie, Canada, I had a severe attack which lasted two days and two nights. The third night I was so tired and worn out that I went to sleep in spite of the pain. I woke up hearing myself say, "Don't stick that ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... democratic principle, and are therefore consistent in denying all political rights to people of colour. The Australian Colonies have taken an even more drastic method. Most of them forbid the Chinese to enter the country, and admit the dark-skinned Polynesian only as a coolie labourer, to be sent back when his term is complete. France, however, is more indulgent, and in some of her tropical Colonies extends the right of voting, both for local assemblies and for members of the ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... representatives of a Christian nation have gone to Hong Kong and to Singapore, and there, because of their social vices, elaborated a system, first of all of brothel slavery; and domestic slavery has sheltered itself under its wing, as it were; and lastly, at Singapore coolie labor is managed by the same set of officials. What these officials have done has been accepted by the Oriental people about them as done by the Christian civilization. It cannot be said that the evils mentioned above have been the outgrowth of Oriental ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... have to determine whether he is superior to his host and hostess—or the opposite. It is already decided for him, by the laws of etiquette. For the guest at the formal dinner must accord every respect and honor to his host and hostess not in the servile manner of the coolie towards the mandarin, of course—but in the captivating and charming manner that bespeaks the ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... trip to one of the most unhealthy parts of the country killed my old horse "Jack," one coolie, and very nearly extinguished me rendering it imperative that I should seek a change of climate in England. And what a dream-like change it is!—past events appear unreal, and the last few years seem to have escaped from the connecting chain of former ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Good Hope to sell to the Mohammedans, who are forbidden to drink it. At Bombay and Calcutta they exchanged bullion and brandy for opium to sell to the Chinese, who are forbidden to buy or use it. Whether the coolie trade was included in its iniquities or not, I cannot say. Very possibly that was the return cargo. From Ceylon they proceed to Siam, and thence to Hong-Kong, where they drop anchor in the offing, and by a special custom the cargo is sold and paid ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... serious emergency, which threatened to wreck his schemes, the Sirdar's organising talents shone more brilliantly than at any other moment in this account. Travelling swiftly to Moghrat, he possessed himself of the telephone, which luckily still worked. He knew the exact position or every soldier, coolie, camel, or donkey at his disposal. In a few hours, in spite of his crippled transport, he concentrated 5,000 men on the damaged sections of the line, and thereafter fed them until the work was finished. In seven ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... and were soon engaged in a fascinating struggle with the impeded race. The Judge forgot his lameness in springing over a broken sluice-box; Union Mills forgot his whistle in a happy imitation of a Chinese coolie's song. Nevertheless, after ten minutes of this mild dissipation, the pastime flagged; Union Mills was beginning to rub his leg, when a distant rumble shook the earth. The men looked at each other; the diversion was complete; a languid ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... conceded with the thoroughness and courtesy due to his high rank. His inspection completed, the General expressed his thanks, and the party rode away, never to be heard of again,—at least not in that capacity. Shortly afterwards, a notorious spy was seen working as a coolie in the Egyptian Labour Corps. Perhaps he was ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... that was their objective grew in size. Behind it were the buildings: the large, four-winged central structure and the supplementary workshops and hangars, coolie-quarters and outhouses, all dim and shimmering through the infra-red—the mysterious, lonely citadel of Dr. Ku Sui. There it all was, inside the dome, with the rest of the asteroid looming ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... you, yourself," informed Little Billy. "Smatt's name is a byword with the Pacific traders—the shrewd old spider! 'Nippon Trading Company' is the same syndicate we have done business with; and those yellow financiers of Hakodate and Tokyo have many irons in the fire besides the fur iron. Opium and coolie smuggling into California—both very profitable. And old Smatt looks after their American interests, fixes officials, keeps them clear of the law. It was Smatt who rescued Carew ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... to resist the temptation of breaking in." Orders were then given to bring the mason to the court-house. On his arrival he was informed of the charge brought against him. "Ah," said he, "the fault is not mine, but that of the coolie, who made mortar badly." When the coolie was brought, he laid the blame on the potter, who, he said, had sold him a cracked chattie, in which he could not carry sufficient water to mix the mortar properly. Then the potter was brought before the judge, and he explained that the blame ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... have been worn down previously by starvation and torture. Some are stupefied with Saam-su. It is possible in some cases for a criminal who is fortunate enough to have rich relations to procure a substitute; a coolie sells himself to death in such a man's stead for a hundred dollars, and for a week before his surrender indulges in every kind of expensive debauchery, and when the day of doom arrives is so completely stupefied by wine and opium, as to know nothing ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... haughtily. "We've all done coolie-work since we came. I know Jack has." This was to Hawkins's address, and ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... upon every arrival of a steamer from that country, and before the passengers are landed, the Chinese portion of them are visited by an official of the six companies, who ascertains what province each arriving coolie is from. That decides as to which company he ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... some morsels of chocolate, that our liking for these delicacies has set minds and bodies at work all the world over! Many types of humanity have contributed to their production. Picture in the mind's eye the graceful coolie in the sun-saturated tropics, moving in the shade, cutting the pods from the cacao tree; the deep-chested sailor helping to load from lighters or surf-boats the precious bags of cacao into the hold of the ocean ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... then out of the ordinary. Just a usual Lascar, very frightened, waving a cheap cane with a handle like a snake's head. Then another policeman came up in a hurry, and pushed through the crowd. The crowd was on my side, maudlin and sympathetic. They knew all about it. The coolie had tried to stab me. An eager young lady in an apron asked a boy in front—he had just forced through—what was the matter. He knew all ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... wonder how a woman can eat, drink or sleep with a great big ornament hanging over her lips, and some of the earrings must weigh several ounces, for they fall almost to the shoulders. You will meet a dozen coolie women every block with two or three pounds of silver ornaments distributed over their persons, which represent their savings bank, for every spare rupee is invested in a ring, bracelet or a necklace, ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... description to make the purpose plain. The whole process of intoxication by opium was before me, from the heating of the metal pipe to the final stupor that is the gift and end of the Black Smoke. Here, was a coolie mixing the drug; there, just beyond him, was another, drawing whiffs from the bubbling narcotic through the bamboo handle of his pipe; there, still beyond, was another, lying back unconscious, half-clad, repulsive, a very sorry reality ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... house. They were starving, but they did not know how to get any food. One day they heard that a king in a neighbouring country wished to construct a tank and was calling for labourers. So they decided to go to the tank and work there just like common coolie women. Now who do you think the king was? He was the youngest son of the prince of Atpat and the husband of the youngest daughter-in-law. When the prince had lost all his money, his youngest son left the house and set off on a journey. As he travelled he came to a city, the king of which ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... friends on June 20 for the uplifted plateaux of Lesser Tibet. My party consisted of myself, a thoroughly competent servant and passable interpreter, Hassan Khan, a Panjabi; a seis, of whom the less that is said the better; and Mando, a Kashmiri lad, a common coolie, who, under Hassan Khan's training, developed into an efficient travelling servant, and later into a ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... assistance would be exceedingly helpful. A busy three weeks spent in the city and at Witwatersrand enriched them with much very valuable information, both particular and general, and also enabled them to acquire four excellent horses and an Indian coolie groom named Ramoo Samee, who not only bore a most admirable character, but also raised no objection when informed of the nature and scope of the adventure upon which his employers were bound. Here, too, and also at Pretoria, the partners endeavoured to secure the services ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... and pieces of paper are distributed about the church, so that the congregation may easily write chits, which are folded up and dropped into the bag, to be presented at your house next day by the church coolie for payment. This system, though very convenient, is apt to prove something of a trap, for signing a chit is so much easier, and the amount appears to be so much less than if paying in hard cash, that when the monthly total is made up you ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... fertile landscape moved across the window of a story-and-a-half white house which might have been either itself or its own outlying barn. A roof, sheer of slant, dipped down over the window, giving the facade the expression of a coolie under ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... Agpuris, with the women, elephants, guns and baggage in the centre, and Charteris with his Darwanis bringing up the rear. He had taken the precaution to warn the sentries round the tents to turn back any coolie who might try to creep out and carry information to the main camp, while any outsider dropping in for a little friendly conversation was to be gently but firmly detained, and this, with the ruse of leaving the tents standing, ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... 95 deg. A long while after sundown the mercury might drop three degrees, certainly not more. She cast an anxious glance at the sleeper, and her quick eye caught the lagging of the punkah, broken by fitful jerks, which denotes that the coolie—squatting on his heels in the verandah—is pulling the inexorable ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... for caravans arriving from both regions, and exchange place for products from north and south. Seldom do caravans from either direction go farther than this point. Here the merchants rest for a month or two and barter their goods. Tents of every kind, camels, yaks, mules and horses, coolie transports of various races, men of many languages and many religions, give to this high-laid town a truly cosmopolitan stamp in the summer time when the passes are open.[1238] Kabul, which lies at an altitude of nearly 6000 feet near the head of the Kabul River, is the focus of numerous ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... parts, however, were set together with the same strange irregularity that marked the architecture of the city as a whole; and it was capped by an enormous saucer-shaped roof which projected far beyond the eaves, having the appearance of a colossal Chinese coolie hat, inverted. ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tasted native blood, like their own dogs, the hunting mania possessed them, till two millions of Haytians alone had perished. The population had become so reduced as early as 1508 that they were obliged to organize great Indian chases on the main-land, and a Coolie trade sprang up in the Lucayan Islands, to keep the Haytian mines and plantations supplied with hands. Forty thousand of these Lucayans were transported, on the assurance of the Spaniards that they would be restored to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... Harman, leaning on the rail and watching the foam boosting away from the stern and flowing off in creamy lines on the swirl of the wake. Ginnell, owner and captain of the Heart of Ireland, shanghaied and reduced to deck hand, was forward on the look-out, and one of the coolie crew was at ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... in connection with Chinese immigration stand by themselves. The conditions in China are such that the entire Chinese coolie class, that is, the class of Chinese laborers, skilled and unskilled, legitimately come under the head of undesirable immigrants to this country, because of their numbers, the low wages for which they work, and their low standard of living. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the manufacture of sugar both in India and Mauritius, has been at Mount Edgcumbe for the last ten years. He is remarkable for the way in which he maintains order and control over all his numerous native workmen. In the mill itself there are 160 men employed, everyone of whom is a Coolie. There is not a single white man on the premises, excepting two English clerks in the counting house. I was astonished at the perfect order which reigned in the mill, where I spent some time. Everyone appeared ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... Gardens, one alone was left, all the others having been violently torn adrift and swept clean away to the four winds of heaven. Besides these were all the country traders moored to the south of the Pepper Box known as Coolie Bazar, extending as far as Tackta Ghat, which ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... it—than of the prosaic nineteenth century. There had arrived at Hakodate, the northernmost of the then open Japanese ports, on the island of Yezo and Strait of Tsugaru, a mysterious bark, without name or papers, peopled only by Chinese of the coolie class, and bearing evident marks of foul play. From indications she was supposed to be American, and our ship, being the most immediately available, was ordered up to investigate; leaving Nagasaki October 24, 1868. Our course took us over the ground which has since become historic ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... fortified, and it has a British garrison. It has hardly any other population than coolie coal-heavers. It is a desolate-looking place, and there does not appear to be even a blade ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... women of Oriental lands. Their home life is a sealed book to the average person visiting China. Books about China deal mainly with the lower-class Chinese, as it is chiefly with that class that the average visitor or missionary comes into contact. The tourists see only the coolie woman bearing burdens in the street, trotting along with a couple of heavy baskets swung from her shoulders, or they stop to stare at the neatly dressed mothers sitting on their low stools in the narrow alleyways, patching clothing ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... the natives, especially from the English. The gentlemen had therefore to disguise themselves as much as possible, one pretending to be a rich Yankee, who had purchased large estates between Santos and San Paulo, which he had determined to work with slave instead of coolie labour. He was supposed to have come to Rio to select some slaves, but would be obliged to see and consult his partner before deciding on purchase. They were taken to a small shop in the city, and, after some delay, were conducted to a room upstairs, where they waited a quarter of an hour. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... and sending up our cards, learned from a Coolie of the absence of its master, and entered unhesitatingly upon his grounds. Descending a few steps we came to a splendid aviary placed in the centre of the avenue. It was about fifteen feet in diameter and twenty ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... Paradise Street, which was still awake and would be awake for hours. Once clear of the lessening crowd and on to the wharf, he ran again; past the business houses, past the long quarter where the Coringyhis and coolie-folk lived, and, lastly, with a slow, lurking step, to the close vicinity of a house standing alone upon high supports. He skirted round it, but to all appearances it was closed and empty, and he sat down behind a clump of rough elephant-grass ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... Creswell and employ the rather dangerous unskilled white labor (with "ideas" about strikes and socialism) that had drifted into Johannesburg, should we do tremendous things with labor-saving machinery, or were we indeed (desperate yet tempting resort!) to bring in the cheap Indian or Chinese coolie? ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... save that in the only room which remained undestroyed, on the matting of the hard Khang—that is the divan which stretches like a platform across three-quarters of every Chinese room—lay the dead body of a Chinese coolie. The dog, the cat, and the ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... races of men on the earth but ours seemed gathered around this hog of the sea. From barges filled with her cargo, the stuff was being heaved up on the dock by a lot of Irish bargemen. Italian dockers rolled it across to this German ship, and on deck a Jap under-officer was bossing a Coolie crew. These Coolies were dwarfs with big white teeth and stooping, round little shoulders. They had strange, nervous faces, long and narrow with high cheek bones and no foreheads at all to speak of. Their black eyes gleamed. Back and forth ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... city of the middle west and of course started a laundry, since that seems to be the natural vocation of every Chinaman, be he coolie or mandarin. ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... Pathankote, a distance of 54-1/4 miles, in two days. Major Curry, who was in command, gave each man a coolie for his baggage, and ordered the men to get to Duneera the first day the best way they could. At Duneera they halted for the night, and the next day pushed on in the same manner to Pathankote, where they immediately entrained ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... quarters before they came up, a fresh run with him would have ensued, with the chance of his breaking the wires with his teeth. After a while I heard the coolies approaching, and my brother scolding them, and urging them to hasten on. Just as their heads appeared above the bank, the foremost coolie tripped his foot and fell—I groaned with disappointment—presently, my brother came along with them, and brought the battery to my feet; a good deal of the acid had been spilt, but, with the aid of a bottle of fresh acid ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... her fuel-oil tankage isn't sufficient to take her too far foreign and back; added to which she is under American registry, employing American seamen, and I'd rather lay her up than put a coolie crew aboard and compete with the British tramps, with their Lascar and Chinamen, at six and seven dollars a month. We've been running her in our own trade; but the lumber market is very dull and she has but one more cargo in sight; after that is freighted, unless we can ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... ceased looking—even staring—at the black women and their ways, you become aware of the strange variety of races which people the city. Here passes an old Coolie Hindoo, with nothing on but his lungee round his loins, and a scarf over his head; a white- bearded, delicate-featured old gentleman, with probably some caste- mark of red paint on his forehead; his thin limbs, and small ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the labor theory of value is beautifully simple. At least, the formula is simplicity itself. At the same time, it is open to certain very obvious criticisms. It would be absurd to contend that the day's labor of a coolie laborer is equal in productivity to the day's labor of a highly skilled mechanic, or that the day's labor of an incompetent workman is of equal value to that of the most proficient. To refute such a theory is as beautifully simple as the theory itself. In all ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... Carrier. — N. carrier, porter, bearer, tranter|, conveyer; cargador[obs3]; express, expressman; stevedore, coolie; conductor, locomotive, motor. beast, beast of burden, cattle, horse, nag, palfrey, Arab[obs3], blood horse, thoroughbred, galloway[obs3], charger, courser, racer, hunter, jument[obs3], pony, filly, colt, foal, barb, roan, jade, hack, bidet, pad, cob, tit, punch, roadster, goer[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Ghari Habibullah give ample time for the loneliest recluse to pant for the bustle of a livelier world. We were so bored on Thursday that we determined to push on, coute que coute, on Friday morning, although a note sent back by one of the gunners from Domel, by a coolie, informed us that the road about a mile short of that place was completely blocked by a fallen mass of ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... ordeal is mentioned by Mr. Forbes. The coolies of a village in the northern part of Guzerat were accused of having seized and imprisoned a Bohra, and, of extorting a bond from him for 450 rupees. The chief, a Khemaria coolie, named Wagajee, denied the charge, and, for proof of his innocence and that of his people, offered to submit to trial by any kind of ordeal. The Bohra agreed to this mode of proof, and it was determined that the coolie ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... will be in no hurry to let us begin," replied Linforth drily. "There is a Resident at your father's court. Your father is willing, and yet there's not a coolie on ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... want?" he asked. "We have passed all the coolie* laws and we have passed all the Kafir laws. The 'Free' State has been safeguarded and all her colour laws have been adopted by Parliament. What more can the Government do for you?" And so the Union ship in this reactionary ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... a single white printer on whom he could absolutely rely. The white printer had the papers handed to him early on the morning of the examination day, and he duly set them up on a hand-press in the building itself. The printer had one assistant, a coolie clad only in loin-cloth and turban, and every time the coolie left the room he was made to remove both his loin-cloth and turban, so that by no possibility could he have any papers concealed about him. In spite of these precautions, it was clear from internal evidence that some of the students ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... were expecting us, thirty or forty at least, each one dragging forward a reluctant donkey, praising its merits and himself as donkey-driver, and disparaging all the other donkeys and drivers and battling for our helpless persons. What can you do when a towering coolie takes a firm clutch on your arm, and, with an equally firm grip on his donkey's bridle, drags you and the donkey together and is about to lift you on the animal's back, when you are suddenly jerked in an opposite direction by an equally firm hand ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... involved in the substitution of the locomotive for the coolie as a motive power, the freight car for the wheelbarrow in the shipment of produce, and the passenger coach for the cart and the mule-litter in the transportation of people. Railways will inevitably inaugurate in China a new era, ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... like manner, despatched a domestic with a pelisse, the worse for wear, lined with fur from foxes' ribs, so Li Wan, having directed a servant to fill a plate with steamed large taros, and to make up two dishes with red-skinned oranges, yellow coolie oranges, olives and other like things, bade some one take them over to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... of the mental and spiritual thought-life of the different peoples, we shall find it not only molding their language forms, both written and spoken, but manifest as well in their art, philosophy, and even their social polity. And of course we must be fair in our comparisons, and not set a Chinese coolie in the concrete against an English statesman, nor any concrete example of another kind of culture in its decay with the highest bloom to which we believe our own type to be able to ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... beholding, could not but stumble upon certain "glittering generalities," as, that "eggs was eggs," and that the return of them on the fowl's part, in consideration of an advance of corn, was not altogether a voluntary barter,—quite, in short, after the pattern of Coolie apprenticeship. And thus the high moral lesson of the morning was sadly shaken. Of course this boy did not belong to any of the model mammas, for whom we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the streets are gay and busy, with picturesque coolies in their bright cotton draperies and swiftly-passing Cape carts and vehicles of all sorts. We are in D'Urban indeed—D'Urban in unwonted holiday dress and on the tippest tiptoe of expectation and excitement. A Cape cart, with a Chinese coolie driver, and four horses apparently put in harness together for the first time, was waiting for us and our luggage at the post-office. We got into it, and straight-way began to plunge through the sandy streets once more, turning off the high-road and beginning almost ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... at Peking his colleagues in the diplomatic service laughed at him for supposing that his one year's leave of absence would suffice for his far more important mission. Yet the revision of the Burlingame treaty, restricting the importation of cheap coolie labor into this country, which he sought, was accomplished within two months. Another important commercial treaty relative to the importation of opium was likewise completed at the same time. He was also successful ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... might be made on the words coolly and Coolie. The reader may mix to his own taste. It's too hot for any one to make jokes ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... in confusion. "Pardon me," she said, "for speaking to you as if you were a coolie." Then, as she got feebly to her feet—"I believe my right arm ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... them on a steamer bound for Havana and New York, followed by friendly faces and good claret to the last, leaving three baskets of champagne and about a ton of flowers out of account. For an account of Havana, Matanzas, Spanish atrocities, Cuban exports, coolie slavery, and the like topics, the reader is respectfully referred to the book since published by Sir Robert,—"Eight Months in the United States, Cuba, and Canada,"—a work pronounced in critical quarters ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... great attention when the latter was describing to the company at table the beauties of West Indian scenery, the delights of West Indian life, the change that had come over the prospects of Jamaica since the introduction of coolie labor, and the fashion in which the rich merchants of Cuba were setting about getting plantations there for the growth of tobacco. Mr. Roscorla spoke with the air of a man who now knew what the world was. When the old general ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... the nobles or yang-bans, dressed in the eternal white. This, Kim explained, was an automatic determination and advertisement of caste. Thus, at a glance, could one tell, the status of an individual by the degrees of cleanness or of filthiness of his garments. It stood to reason that a coolie, possessing but the clothes he stood up in, must be extremely dirty. And to reason it stood that the individual in immaculate white must possess many changes and command the labour of laundresses to keep his changes immaculate. As for the yang-bans who wore the pale, vari-coloured silks, they ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... importance with the administration of pills and draughts. Further, like our own agricultural classes, they have no faith in medicine of any kind which does not make its presence felt not only quickly but powerfully. This last desire was amply fulfilled in the case of one poor coolie who applied to an acquaintance of ours for some foreign medicine to cure a sick headache and bilious attack from which he was suffering. Our friend immediately bethought himself of a Seidlitz powder; but when all was ready, the acid in one wine-glass ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... caste has degenerated into a fastidious tenacity of the rights and privileges of station. For example, the man who sweeps will not take an empty cup from your hand; your groom will not mow a little grass; a coolie will carry any load, however offensive, on his head, but even in a matter of life and death would refuse to carry a man, for that is the business ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... pass, which eventually proved to be impossible. From Gupis onwards we had to be content with the usual hill track of these countries, good enough for a country pony, but still nothing to be proud of; here we discarded our Government mules, and took coolie transport instead. The march from Gupis to Dahimal is a long, trying one, up and down all the way. Cobbe, who was on rearguard, didn't get in ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... amounts of freight, in Manila as in all places in the Orient, the ubiquitous Chinese coolie is the usual means of transportation, and with a huge load at each end of a bamboo pole across his shoulder he shambles along with a curious gait, between a walk and a run, that he seems capable of sustaining for ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... comely, of a buxom type, and, like the men, with highly-developed calves, the latter always being considered a beauty. The children are frequently remarkably pretty. Khasis carry very heavy burdens, it being the custom for the coolie of the country to carry a maund, or 82 lbs. weight, or even more occasionally, on his back, the load being fixed by means of a cane band which is worn across the forehead; women carry almost as heavy loads as the men. The coolies, both male and female, ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... Fort-de-France Statue of Josephine Inner Basin, Bridgetown, Barbadoes Trafalgar Square, Bridgetown, Barbadoes Street in Georgetown, Demerara Avenue in Georgetown, Demerara Victoria Regia in the Canal at Georgetown Demerara Coolie Girl St. James Avenue, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad Coolies of Trinidad Coolie Servant Coolie Merchant Church Street, St. George, Grenada Castries, St. Lucia 'Ti Marie Fort-de-France, Martinique Capre in Working Garb A Confirmation Procession Manner of Playing the Ka A Wayside ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... mad, would now be ruling a lordly household, even wearing the peacock feather and embroidered jacket that were his by right of the Dragon's blood, that blood now hidden under the sun-browned skin of a river coolie. Kan Wong stuffed fine-cut into his brass-bowled pipe and struck a spark from his tinder box. Through his wide nostrils twin streamers of smoke writhed out, twisting fantastically together and mixing slowly with the rising river mist. His pipe became a wand of dreams summoning the genii of glorious ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... of Birch Coolie, when General Sibley had assembled at Fort Ridgely a large force to go up the Minnesota River against the Indians, he sent Franklin Steele and myself to St. Peter to gather up supplies for his command. We started in a spring wagon ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... past, the pumping plants devoted to the purposes of irrigation will present as great a contrast to the lifting appliances of the East as does a fully loaded freight train or a mammoth steam cargo-slave to a coolie carrier. ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... travelling bazaar—a coolie with his bundle of fans and bric-a-brac, wandering from house to house, even in the suburbs; and the old fellows, with a handful of sliced bamboos and chairs swinging from the poles over their shoulders, are becoming quite numerous; chair mending and reseating must be profitable. These ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... the punkah coolie, feeling his presence to be intolerable, and threw himself down with his coat flung open. The oppression of the atmosphere was as though a red-hot lid were being forced down upon the tortured earth. The blackness beyond the veranda was like a solid wall. Sleep ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... senses were confused by the strange cries, and the Babel of languages which resounded in our ears from the crowds of people who swarmed along the streets in every variety of Eastern dress. There was the half-naked coolie; the well-clothed Citinese, in a loose white coat, like a dressing-gown; the Arab merchant, in his flowing robes; and the Javanese gentleman, in smart jacket and trousers, sash and sarong, or petticoat, a curious penthouse-like ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... either from sheer nervousness or from resentment at the ill-treatment that it had just received, might attack him and trample him to death. Indeed, many tame elephants, being unused to Europeans, will not allow white men to approach them. So the Hindu coolie stood trembling with fright, while the havildar and the butler were alarmed ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... three inches of water in two hours. This is at the rate of 2.5 acre-inches of water per ten hours per man, and for 12 to 15 cents, our currency, thus making sixteen acre-inches, or the season's supply of water, cost 77 to 96 cents, where coolie labor is hired and fed. Such is the efficiency of human power applied to the Chinese pump, measured ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... value, the pessimistic mood must be declining. Let us observe some facts again. In a Government or Mission Hospital, there is a European doctor taking part in the offensive work of the dressing of a coolie's sores,—we assume that the doctor's touch is the touch of a true Christian gentleman. To the despised sufferer, life is gaining a new sweetness, and to the high-caste student looking on and ready to imitate his teacher, life is attaining a new dignity. That human ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... he a great, what you call him—Coolie? Pug? Yes, he was a Scottish Coolie. The other was a little wee dog; a Pugnacious Dog, I think ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... you were clumsy,' Moti answered. Moti was peevish that afternoon. The Maharajah had refused him a gun, and he particularly wanted a gun, not to shoot anything, but to frighten the crows with and perhaps the coolie-folk. To console himself Moti had eaten twice as many sweetmeats as were good for him, and was in a bad ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... obtained by dint of incessant shouting to the slave (frequently an Indian Coolie) who presides in the detached kitchen, and brings in the viands as fast as he "dishes up." The roast mutton gradually cools upon the table while Mooto is deliberately forking the potatoes out of the pot, and muttering curses against his master, who stands at the parlour-door, swearing ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... they started for the Palace, a coolie carrying a box containing their second suits, and the simple dresses they had worn on their arrival. Dick could not help smiling, at the manner in which the people in the streets obsequiously made way ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... a fish restaurant, and we cooked the fish and vegetables ourselves, but over gas, not charcoal this time. Then we had side dishes, fish, lobster, etc., innumerable. Instead of bringing you in a bill of fare to order from, the coolie brings a big tray with samples of everything on it, and you help yourself. One thing was abalones on the half shell, these being babies, about like our clams, but not so tough, to say nothing of as tough as the big ones. I didn't try the fried ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... to get rid of him. He went away, seeming to understand, and got out some of my clothes and began to brush them. I repeated my desire several times, simplifying and re-simplifying it, and at last he got the idea. Then he went away and put a coolie at the work, and explained that he would lose caste if he did it himself; it would be pollution, by the law of his caste, and it would cost him a deal of fuss and trouble to purify himself and accomplish his rehabilitation. He said that that kind ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and coal-dust, pushed bang against me and hurled me without ceremony from his path. My baggage, meantime, was thrown onto a two-wheeled van, drawn by four of those poor human beasts of burden—how horrible to have been born a Chinese coolie!—and I was whirled away to my hotel for tucker. The French mail had given us coffee and rolls at six, but the excitement of landing at a foreign port does not usually produce the net amount of satisfaction to or make for the sustenance of the inner man of the phlegmatic Englishman, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... and perpetual repetition of their produce. If this prescription be consistently carried out it will prove more remunerative than any which has ever been applied in agriculture. It is this: Let every farmer, like the Chinese coolie, who carries a sack of corn or a hundred weight of rape, or carrots or potatoes, etc., to town, bring back with him as much if possible or more of the ingredients of his field products as he took with him, and restore it to the field whence it came. He must not despise a ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... "there's a greater gulf fixed between my Munshi and my 'rickshaw coolie than there is between me and my 'rickshaw coolie, or my Munshi ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... (coolies). These are recruited in certain districts of India, usually by sending good reliable men, already in your employ, to their home country, under a contract to pay them so much a head for every coolie they can persuade (by lies or otherwise) to come to your garden. The coolies must then bind themselves to work for you for, say, three to four years. They are paid for their work, not much it is true, but enough to support them with comfort; the men about three annas (or fourpence) a day, ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... day," observed Billy. "I hope that you won't think it silly If I say that this heat Makes me think 'twould be sweet If one were a coolie in Chile!" ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various |
