IN NORTHERN MISTS 



vice versa. The stone that forms this island is very light. ... A man is 

 there able to carry a large mass of rock." This floating island resembles those 

 met with in tales from the Faroes and elsewhere (cf. Vol. I, pp. 375 f.). Even 

 Pliny [Nat. Hist., ii, c. 95] has statements about floating islands, and Las Casas, 

 in 1552-61 [Historias de las Indias in " Documentos ineditos," Ixii. p. 99], says 

 that in the story of St. Brandan many such islands (?) are spoken of in the 

 sea round the Cape Verde Islands and the Azores, and he asserts that " the 

 same is mentioned in the book of ' Inventio f ortunata,' " that is, by Nicholas of 

 Lynn [cf. De Costa, 1880, p. 185]. 



" ' The Island of Women.' This is an island that lies on the borders of the 

 Chinese Sea. It is related that it is inhabited only by women, who become 

 pregnant by the wind, and who bear only female children; it is also said that 

 they become pregnant by a tree, of which they eat the fruit.i They feed on 

 gold, which with them grows in canes like bamboo." This myth, as will be 

 seen, resembles Adam of Bremen's tale of the land of women, Kvaenland (VoL 

 I, p. 186). Myths of women's islands are, moreover, very widespread; they are 

 found in various forms in classical authors (p. 47) in Arab writers (cf. above, 

 pp. 197, 206), in Indian legends, among the Irish (Vol. I, pp. 354, 357), among 

 the Chinese, etc. It is partly the Amazon idea that appears here, partly the 

 happy land desired by men. 



Through an apparently small thing, the Arabs possibly 

 exercised more than in anything else a transforming influence 

 upon the navigation, geography, and cartography of Europe; 

 for it was probably they who first brought to Europe the knowl- 

 edge of the magnetic needle as a guide. We know that the 

 Chinese were acquainted with it, at any rate in the second 

 century A.D., and used it for a kind of compass for overland 

 journeys. Whether they also used it at sea we do not know, 

 but it may readily be supposed that they did. That the Arabs 

 through their direct commercial intercourse with the Chinese 

 became acquainted with this discovery at an early date, seems 

 probable; but curiously enough we hear nothing of it in 

 Arabic literature before the thirteenth century. As the Arabs 

 and Turks after that date used the Italian word " bossolo " 

 for compass (bussol), it has been thought that they may have 

 derived their knowledge of it, not from China, but from Italy; 

 but it seems more reasonable to suppose that, while they had 

 their first knowledge of the magnetic needle from China, they 



1 The same ideas also occur in European fairy-tales and generally in the 

 world of mediaeval conceptions. 

 214 



