even in the third century of our era, therefore at least 700 years before the use of the Mariner's Compass in the European seas, Chinese vessels navigated the Indian Ocean under the direction of magnetic needles pointing to the south.”

In the Japanese Cyclopædia, vol. 33, is a representation of one of these chariots. The figure in front was made of some light material; it was fixed upon a pivot, and its finger invariably pointed to the south, which was the Kibleh, or sacred point of the Chinese, to which they always turned when performing their devotions. It is intimated rather obscurely, that these magnetic chariots were first invented for a religious purpose; namely, to enable the devout to discover their Kibleh when the sun and stars were obscured by clouds-a purpose to which the Compass is frequently applied in the present day by Mohammedan nations; but there are also full descriptions of the use made of these chariots in directing the march of armies and guiding ambassadors. M. Klaproth has collected, from Chinese authorities, many curious anecdotes of the use made of these chariots under the Tsin dynasty they formed a part of every royal procession. In the history of that dynasty, we find: "The wooden figure placed on the magnetic car resembled a genius wearing a dress made of feathers; whatever was the position of the car, the hand of the genius always pointed to the south. When the Emperor went in state, one of these cars headed the procession, and served to indicate the cardinal points."

In the history of the second Tchao dynasty, which lasted from A.D. 319 to A.D. 351, we read:-"The Chang-Fang (president of the Board of Works) ordered Kiai-Fei, who was distinguished by his great skill in constructing every kind of instrument, to build a number of magnetic chariots, which were sent as presents to the principal grandees of the empire." There are several accounts of the manner in which the magnetic figures were constructed a magnetized bar passed through the arm of the figure, and the only variety of ingenuity displayed by the architect was in balancing the figure upon the pivot. We quote these details from a notice of M. Klaproth's work, in the Athenaum, No. 369.

Extracted from the annals of a Chinese historian, contemporary with the destruction of the Bactrian empire by Mithridates I., we find that the Emperor Tching-wang (1110 years before our era) presented to the Ambassadors of Tong-King and

Cochin China, who dreaded the loss of their way back to their own country, five magnetic cars, which pointed out the south by means of a moving arm of a little figure covered with a vest of feathers. To each of these cars, too, a hodometer, marking the distances traversed by strokes on a bell, was attached, so as to exhibit a complete dead reckoning. Maurice, in his Indian Antiquities, describes this instrument as a sort of magnetic index, which the Chinese called Chimaus; a name by which they at this day denominate the Mariner's Compass. Such inventions, says Sir John Herschel, are not the creation of a few years, or a few generations. They presuppose long centuries of previous civilization, and that, too, at an epoch contemporary with Codrus and the return of the Heraclides to the Peloponnesus"-the obscure dawn of European history! Even the declination of the needle, or its direction from the true meridian, was known to this extraordinary people at the epoch in question.

The Magnetic Car or Wagon was used as late as the fifteenth century. Several of these carriages were carefully preserved in the Chinese Imperial Palace, and were employed in the building of Buddhist monasteries, in fixing the points towards which the main sides of the edifice should be directed.

The Sea, or strictly speaking, Mariner's Compass, is first noticed as used by the Chinese in the dynasty of Tain, 265-419 A.D., in their great Dictionary Poi-we-yeu-fou. It was known on the Syrian coast before its general use in Europe, and is thus described by Bailak Kibdjaki, in 1242: "We have to notice amongst other properties of the Magnet, that the captains who navigate the Syrian Sea, when the night is so dark as to conceal from view the stars which might direct their course according to the position of the four cardinal points, take a basin full of water, which they shelter from wind by placing it in the interior of the vessel they then drive a needle into a wooden peg or a cornstalk, so as to form the shape of a cross, and throw it into a basin of water prepared for the purpose, on the surface of which it floats. They afterwards take a loadstone of sufficient: size to fill the palm of the hand, or even smaller, bring it to the surface of the water, give to their hands a rotatory motion towards the right, so that the needle turns on the water's surface; they then suddenly and quickly withdraw their hands, when the two points of the needle face north and south. They have given me ocular demonstration of this process.

during our sea-voyage from Syria to Alexandria, in the year 640 of the Hegira."

Earlier notices are given by the Arabic writers, but this is the most distinct. Instead of calling the magnet a needle, the Arabians name it monasala, a dart; hence the mistake of the feathers for fleur-de-lis; and the needle, therefore, still points to the south, as it does in China.

Humboldt considers it probable that Europe owes the use of the Mariner's Compass to the Arabs, and that these people were, in turn, indebted for it to the Chinese. In the fourth century of our era, Chinese ships employed the Magnet to guide their course safely across the open sea; and it was by means of these vessels that the knowledge of the Compass was carried to India, and from thence to the eastern coast of Africa. The Arabic designations Toron and Aphron (south and north), which are given to the two ends of the Magnetic Needle, indicate, like many Arabic names of stars, which we still employ, the channel and the people from whom Western countries received the elements of their knowledge.

In Christian Europe, the first mention of the use of the Magnetic needle occurs in the politico-satirical poem, Le Bible, by Guyot of Provence, in 1190; but it is evident from the terms used by him that it was an instrument but little known, and which had only lately been introduced into Europe. Cardinal de Vitry and Vincent de Beauvais, who were attached to the French army in the Crusades, both speak of the Compass as a great curiosity which they had seen in the East. Guyot, or De Provence, was a minstrel; and, as he wrote some five-andtwenty years before the Cardinal, probably obtained his knowledge of the polarity of the Magnet, and its application to the purposes of direction, from the same part of the world. As one reads the stories of these chroniclers, the imagination pictures the wild scenery of a Syrian landscape, where a party of bewildered travellers, composed of such as the persons we have mentioned, are resting beside some crystal spring. Around are picturesque hills, beneath one of which are grouped the persons who first brought authentic information to Europe of that invention which was so marvellously to influence the destinies of mankind. There sits the Cardinal, half soldier, half priest, clad in his tonsure, and girt with his two-handed sword; De Beauvais, with helm by his side, guarded at all points by his supple chain armour; and De Provence,

who has just laid aside the lute with which he has beguiled his hearers and the time, listening to the strange accounts of the dark-bearded and turbaned traveller, who, with the small Com

pass in his hand, is pointing to the direction they must take to rejoin their friends.

About thirty years after the above date, Cardinal de Vitry visited Palestine in the Fourth Crusade, and subsequently at the beginning of the thirteenth century, he returned to Europe, and afterwards went back to

the Holy Land, where he wrote his work entitled Historia Orientalis, as nearly as can be determined, between the years 1215 and 1220. In chapter xci. of that work, he has this singular passage:-"The iron needle, after contact with the loadstone, constantly turns to the north star, which, as the axis of the firmament, remains immoveable, whilst the others

revolve; and hence it is essentially necessary to those navigating on the ocean." These words are as explicit as they are extraordinary; they state a fact and announce a use.

About 1260, Brunetto Latinè, author of Le Trésor, in French, and Dante's teacher, observes that the Needle was highly useful at sea; but at the same time notices the prejudices by which navigators were deterred from its adoption: "For," says he, "no master-mariner dares to use it, lest he should fall under the supposition of being a magician; nor would even the sailors venture themselves out to sea under his command, if he took with him an instrument which carries so great an appearance of being constructed under the influence of some infernal spirit." Dante refers, in a simile, to the needle "which points to the star." Navarrete quotes a remarkable passage in the Spanish Leyes de las Partidas of the middle of the thirteenth century: "The needle which guides the seaman in the dark nights, and shows him, both in good and in bad weather, how to direct his course, is the intermediate agent between the loadstone and the north star." Raymond Lully, of Majorca, the analytic chemist and skilful navigator, in 1286, remarked that the seamen of his time employed “instruments of measurement, sea-charts, and the magnetic needle."

To recapitulate. From its use on land the Compass became finally adapted to maritime purposes. When it had become general throughout the Indian Ocean, along the shores of Persia and Arabia, it was introduced into the West, in the twelfth century, either directly through the influence of the Arabs, or through the agency of the Crusaders, who, since 1096, had been brought in contact with Egypt and the true Oriental regions. The most effectual share in its use seems to have belonged to the Moorish pilots, the Genoese, Venetians, Majorcans, and Catalans. The old story that Marco Polo first brought the Compass into Europe, has long been disproved: as he travelled from 1271 to 1295, it is evident, from the testimony we have given us, that the Compass was, at all events, used in European seas from sixty to seventy years before Marco Polo set forth on his journeyings.

The earliest mention in English records of the primitive Mariner's Compass is that by Alexander Neckham, who describes the same in his Treatise on Things pertaining to Ships. Neckham was born at St. Alban's, in 1157. A translation of his works, from the Latin, was published in 1866.