THE MARINER’S COMPASS. 451 
But in spite of the growth of trade and navigation in Italy and 
Spain, many years had yet to elapse after the fall of the Roman 
empire ere the gates of the Atlantic were once more opened to 
the navigators of the Mediterranean. It was not before the 
middle of the thirteenth century, after Seville and a great part 
of the Andalusian coast had been wrested from the Moors by 
Ferdinand of Castile, that the Italian and Catalonian seafarers, 
encouraged by privileges and remissions of duties, began to visit 
the port of Cadiz, where they met with merchants from Portugal 
and Biscay. Soon after, and most probably in consequence of 
the connexions thus formed, we find Italian ships visiting the 
ports of England and the Netherlands. About 1316, Ge- 
noese vessels began to carry goods to England; and somewhat 
later the Venetians, whose visits are not mentioned by the 
chroniclers before 1323. 
Thus after a long interruption we see the seamen of the 
Mediterranean at length resuming the track to the Atlantic 
ports that had been struck out more than thirty centuries before 
by their predecessors the Phcenicians. But their voyages to the 
western ocean took place under circumstances much more 
favourable than those which had attended the men of Tyre and 
Carthage in their adventurous expeditions. Not only the better 
construction of their ships, but still more the use of the mariner’s 
compass, for which Europe is probably indebted to the Arabs, 
who in their turn owed its knowledge to the Chinese, enabled 
them to steer more boldly into the open sea, and regardless of 
the bendings of the coasts to reach their journey’s end by a less 
circuitous route. The period when the magnetie needle was 
first made use of by the Mediterranean navigators is not exactly 
known, but so much is certain that it did good service long be- 
fore the time of Flavio Gioja (1302), to whom its discovery has 
been erroneously ascribed, though he may have introduced some 
improvement in the arrangement of the compass. Humboldt 
tells us in his “* Cosmos,” that in the satirical poem of Guyot de 
Provens, “ La Bible” (1190), and in the description of Palestine 
by Jaques de Vitry, bishop of Ptolemais (1204 — 1215), the sea- 
compass is mentioned as a well-known instrument. Dante also 
speaks of the needle which points to the stars (Paradise, xii. 29); 
and in a nautical work by Raimundus Lullus of Majorca, written 
in the year 1286, we find another proof of a much earlier 
Isl 1a 
