101 



COMPASS, HISTORY OF THE. 



COMPASS, THE MARINER'S. 



102 



wang, unable any longer to keep him in check, ordered him to with- 

 draw himself to Chao-hao, in order that he might thua detain him in 

 the west. Tchi-yeou nevertheless persisted more and more in his 

 perverse conduct. He crossed the river Yang-choui, ascended the 

 Kieou-nao, and gave battle to the Emperor Yan-ti at Khoung-sang. 

 Yan-ti was obliged to retire and seek an asylum in the plain of Tchou- 

 lou. Hiuan-yuan (the proper name of the Emperor Houang-ti) then 

 collected the forces of the vassals of the empire, and attacked Tchi- 

 yeou in the plains of Tchou-lou. The latter raised a thick fog, in 

 order that by means of the darkness he might spread confusion in the 

 enemy's army. But Hiuan-yuan constructed a chariot for indicating 

 the south, ia order to distinyniih the four cardinal points ; by means of 

 which he pursued Tchi-yeou and took him prisoner. He caused him 

 to be ignominiously put to death at Tchoung-ki. The spot received, 

 from this circumstance, the name of the plain of the broken curb." 



Other Chinese accounts vary as to language and as to circumstances 

 relating to the personal character of Tchi-yeou ; but they all agree in 

 the statement respecting the Tchi-nan (or chariot of the south) being 

 constructed by the emperor on that occasion ; and it is remarkable 

 that the very name by which the instrument is denoted, like every 

 thing else Chinese, is retained almost unvaried from the earliest period 

 of their history down to the present times. 



Though numerous other passages of various dates speak with equal 

 explicitness of the use of the compass for land purposes, yet no mention 

 of the use of the magnet for navigation occurs in any of their books 

 that have come to the knowledge of Europeans, till the dynasty of 

 Tain, which lasted from the year A.D. 265 to 419. It is in the great 

 dictionary Poi-wen-yeu-fou ; and it is there stated that " there were 

 then ships directed to the south by the needle." Mr. Davies contends 

 that thia passage rather refers to the magnitude of their ships and the 

 extent of the voyages which they performed, than to the introduction 

 of the needle into marine affairs. In the 9th oentury two Mohammedan 

 travellers travelled into Arabia, an account of whose journey was pub- 

 lished from an Arabic manuscript (which bears internal marks of being 

 written as early as the close of the 1 1th century) by Eusebius Renaudot, 

 at Paris, in 171 8. In this it is stated, that the Chinese at that period 

 (the 9th century ) traded in ships to the Persian Gulf and the Ked Sea ; 

 and though the compass is not mentioned, it is utterly improbable 

 that the Chinese should have known the directive property of the 

 magnet, and have tued it on land for thirty centuries, and yet not have 

 employed it at sea. It was known on the Syrian coast before it had 

 come into general use in Europe, as is obvious from the following 

 passage from a manuscript witten in 1242, by Bailak Kibdjaki, which 

 ia very explicit in its description of the nautical compass : " We have 

 ' ice, amongst other properties of the magnet, that the captains 

 win i 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 corn-stalk, so as to form the 

 shape of a cross, and throw it into the basin of water prepared for the 

 -o, 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 

 :i towards the right, so that tb 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 smith. They have given 

 me ocular demonstration of thi pr. - during our sea-voyage from 

 Syria to Alexandria in tin- yoar (i 10 " (of the Hegira). An older passage 

 than this might have been quoted, did the limits of our article allow of 

 amplification ; but thin has been chosen on account of the distinctness 

 of the description. When we consider the jealousy with which all 

 knowledge was guarded by its possessors, especially that of cwnmen-iul 

 value, we cannot but admit that the use of the compass must have 

 been very common at a period when a passenger was initiated into the 

 complete knowledge of the mode of magnetising the steel needle, as 

 well as the mode of using it. 



In 1260, when Marco Polo returned from his travels in Cathai, he is 

 believed to have brought a knowledge of the compass, as well as other 

 Chinese inventions, back to Europe with him ; but there is no known 

 authority for this opinion that can lay claim to authenticity. It is 

 certain, however, that before the close of the 15th oentury, when 

 Vasco de Oama found his way round the Cape of Good Hope, the 

 pilots of the Indian Seas were expert in the use of sea-charts, the 

 xtrolabe, and the compass. 



A passage extracted from the ' Landnamabok ' of Are Frode, who 

 Ihred about the close of the llth century, has been brought forward by 

 Professor Hansteen to prove the use of the magnetic needle for pur- 

 _ MM of navigation at least as early as that date, in Norway ; "fur hi 

 (AoK tinf* teamen had no loadstrme in the northern countries." But this 

 passage ia most probably an interpolation by the continuato'* of the 

 chronicle, which view is supported both by the remark of the editor, 

 % of the chronicle itself, as well as by the circumstance of 

 the wh ile passage not being found in three different manuscripts. 

 Its authentic origin cannot reach higher than the 14th century. 



jy.) 



mariner 1 ! compass is, however, minutely described by Guyot de 

 n, who wrote his satire entitled ' La Bible,' about the year 1190. 



This has usually been assumed to contain no indication that the 

 mariner's compass was a recent discovery or only little known in 

 France at the time of the composition of the satire ; but Mr. Davies 

 considers that the minuteness of the description itself, as well as other 

 collateral evidence, proves clearly that it was an instrument at that 

 time not only not much known, but a total novelty. Guyot, a minstrel 

 by profession, had probably seen it in use during the Crusades, to one 

 of which most likely he had previously attached himself. At all events, 

 Cardinal de Vitry and Vincent de Beauvais, both Frenchmen, and both 

 Crusaders, writing at a later period by a quarter or half a century than 

 Guyot, speak of it as a great curiosity which .they saw in the East, and 

 as a thing perfectly new in Europe would be spoken of. There is not 

 hence the slightest foundation for the belief that it was used by 

 European seamen at so early a period, though there can be but little 

 doubt that by the middle of the 1 3th century it had come into partial 

 use and into general knowledge ; since, iu one of the songs of Gauthier 

 d'Epinois is an o&UMWj which no one would have made had not his 

 auditors been familiar with the magnetic needle. 



It was long contended, that the inventor of the compass, as a nautical 

 instrument, was Flavio Gioja, a native of Amalfi, near Naples, and the 

 date given by the Italians is from 1300 to 1320. It will be obvious, 

 from what we have already said, that there is no foundation for this 

 opinion ; and independently of this, the authority of the statements 

 themselves is invalidated by an appeal to the facts which are affirmed 

 in proof of it, as may be seen either in Klaproth's letter or in the 

 ' British Annual.' Before this assigned period, even the ' Tre"sor ' of 

 Brunette Latini (the master of the Divine Dante) bears evidence that 

 the compass was not a rarity. It is, however, highly probable that 

 Gioja greatly improved the compass, either by its mode of suspension, 

 or by the attachment of the card to the needle itself, or in some other 

 important particular. 



The French have laid claim to the discovery of the compass, or at 

 least to the attachment of the card to the needle, from the circumstance 

 of the north point being marked with the fleur-de-lis ; but in the absence 

 of all distinct evidence on this point, it is much more probable that the 

 view taken by Mr. Davies is correct, that the figure is an ornamented 

 cross, and originated in devotion to the mere symbol ; though, as he 

 observes, as the compass undoubtedly came into Europe from the 

 Arabs, the Jleiir-de-lis might possibly be a modification of the mouasrtla 

 or dart, the name by which the Arabs called the needle. 



The discovery of the variation of the needle was generally (before 

 the appearance of Cavallo's ' Treatise on Magnetism ') attributed to 

 Columbus, but since that time it has been assumed as being very early 

 known. [DECLINATION OF THE NKEDLE.] 



The dip of the needle, or its inclination, was the undoubted discovery 

 of an Englishman, Robert Norman, a nautical instrument maker at 

 Wapping, who published an interesting account of the course of his 

 experiments in 1594, under the title of the ' New Attractive.' [DIPPING 

 NF.KDLE ; MAGNETIC INTENSITY.] 



The variation of <l<-rlin:ii<"ii in also an English discovery, having been 

 made, as is well authenticated, by Stephen Burrowes, of Limehouse, 

 and fully determined by Gillebrand, professor of geometry in Gresham 

 College; and the diurnal variation of the declination also unques- 

 tionably belongs to another Englishman, Mr. Graham, about 1719. 



England, in the person of an intrepid and accomplished navigator 

 and marine surveyor, Capt. Flinders, claims another discovery of great 

 and enduring importance. In his memorable but unfortunate voyage 

 hi the " Investigator," he first detected the cause of errors in the 

 variation of the magnetic needle as depending on the direction in azi- 

 muth of the ship's head. The value of this has been extensively felt 

 among nautical men, and considering that the announcement of his 

 discovery was made (' Philosophical Transactions' for 1805) during the 

 six years he was unjustly imprisoned and detained at the Mauritius by 

 the French governor, De Caen, and that on his release, with greatly 

 impaired health and pecuniary resources, the numerous experim nts 

 made under his directions at Sheerness, Plymouth, and Portsmouth, 

 fully confirmed his original views, the name of Flinders will stand 

 forth prominently in nautical history as one of the most persevering 

 (though unrequited), as he was one of the most accurate, among 

 modern surveyors, and scarcely second to Cook among modern 

 navigators. 



COMPASS, AZIMUTH, is a compass with plain sights, and with 

 vertical wires attached to it in such a manner as to be moveable round 

 a vertical axis independently of the compass-card. A pointer shows 

 angle which the position of the telescope, or sights, marks out on the 

 card, that is, the bearing of the object towards which the sights are 

 directed. This angle is the azimuth of the object, when the correction 

 for magnetic variation is made. But when the bearings of two objects 

 are measured, the correction need not be applied in merely deter- 

 mining the difference of bearings, since the error affects both equally. 



When observations in azimuth requiring greater accuracy are taken, 

 an instrument called a Theodolite is used. [AZIMUTH ; THEODOLITE ; 

 CIRCLE.] 



COMPASS, THE MARINER'S. A magnetic needle balanced on a 

 pivot will, subject to corrections for the variation of the magnet on 

 account of terrestrial influence, poult out the true direction of north 

 and south. A card bearing the points of the compass, and unalterably 

 attached to any apparatus, such as a globe, will therefore afford the 



