What is "coolie"

Usage examples of "coolie".

Loiterers assembled, but no one came to draw the vehicle, and by degrees the dismal truth leaked out that the three coolies who had been impressed for the occasion had all absconded, and that four policemen were in search of them.

Mahoney, who had seated himself on a chock close by, as a large party of Oriental coolies arrived and began unloading and spreading what appeared to be the brickwork of a house that had got in the way of a big shell.

Tea-houses are of all grades, from the three-storied erections, gay with flags and lanterns, in the great cities and at places of popular resort, down to the road-side tea-house, as represented in the engraving, with three or four lounges of dark-coloured wood under its eaves, usually occupied by naked coolies in all attitudes of easiness and repose.

On the descent, when things began to look very bad, and the mountain-sides had become cascades bringing trees, logs, and rocks down with them, we were fortunate enough to meet with two packhorses whose leaders were ignorant of the impassability of the road to Odate, and they and my coolies exchanged loads.

He showed him pictures of houses, streets, villages, and temples, of fantastic Batu caves near Kuala Lumpur, and of the jagged, wildly beautiful limestone and marble mountains near Ipoh, and when Veraguth asked if there were no pictures of natives, he dug out photographs of Malays, Chinese, Tamils, Arabs, and Javanese, naked athletic harbor coolies, wizened old fishermen, hunters, peasants, weavers, merchants, beautiful women with gold ornaments, dark naked groups of children, fishermen with nets, earringed Sakai playing the nose flute, and Javanese dancing girls bristling with silver baubles.

Chamberlain and I went in a kuruma hurried along by three liveried coolies, through the three miles of crowded streets which lie between the Legation and Asakusa, once a village, but now incorporated with this monster city, to the broad street leading to the Adzuma Bridge over the Sumida river, one of the few stone bridges in Tokiyo, which connects east Tokiyo, an uninteresting region, containing many canals, storehouses, timber-yards, and inferior yashikis, with the rest of the city.

Jiro and Shoji watched from the deck as groups of Chinese coolies, along with other groups of American laborers, unloaded the ship.

Hiraga nodded, drained the last cup then got up, stripped off the starched yukata that all Houses and Inns habitually supplied their clients, and dressed again in the most ordinary kimono of a villager, rough turban and coolie straw hat, then shouldered the empty delivery basket.

But the mafu and the coolies were too frightened to continue the journey, so they were left behind, and Withers and the shroff went off by themselves.

Outside, along the gutter, were the trishaws, the evolution of the rickshaw, a bicycle and a sidecar with the coolie pedalling.

But their trishaws were now moving slowly out from the gutter, into the street, and his coolie bent his head and went out too.

A contingent of coolies kowtowed along the path to the waiting sedan chair, then scrambled to lead the way across the square as his escort of lictors formed a procession around him.

Their actual number was not more than a dozen, of whom the leader was a Chinaman with the loose-looking shoulders and physical strength of a Shanghai longshore coolie.

But the mafu and the coolies were too frightened to continue the journey, so they were left behind, and Withers and the shroff went off by themselves.

You have missionaries, native schoolmasters, employers of coolies, traders, simple downright men, who scarcely suspect the existence of any sources of error in their verdicts, who are incapable of understanding the difference between what is innate and what is acquired, much less of distinguishing them in their interplay.