OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 215 



the successful voyagers having been bruited among 

 their countrymen, no danger of capture or destruction 

 at the hands of ruthless pirates sufficed to deter the 

 eager voyagers"; nor, when we come to think of it, 

 was this attitude of mind unreasonable. Men, who 

 had braced themselves to meet the thousand dangers 

 of an unknown ocean, to whom navigation, as we 

 understand it, was but a series of guesses, and the 

 principal component of whose enterprises was hope, 

 could hardly be deterred by the remote possibility 

 of meeting with pirates ; it was a risk not to be com- 

 pared with those they met daily and nightly, without 

 any preparation, to be considered at all adequate for 

 the unequal conflict. 



Contemporary with the rise and progress of sea- 

 faring on the seas of Europe, the Arabs, on the other 

 side of Africa, had discovered that the sea afforded for 

 them, too, a comparatively easy road to power and 

 wealth. The narrow but deep waters of the Eed Sea 

 and Persian Gulf afforded men an admirable learning- 

 ground, having settled weather, deep water, and skies 

 always free from cloud. By reason of this latter 

 advantage, indeed, they became expert navigators, 

 for to them had descended the ancient astronomical 

 wisdom of the Chaldeans, supplemented and reinforced 

 by their own researches and improvements in mathe- 

 matical knowledge. When and where among them 

 the mariner's compass first appeared, the one instru- 

 ment wanting to complete their equipment for ocean 

 navigation, is uncertain; but my own belief is that 

 they either met on one of their roaming voyages to 

 the East with a Chinese junk, part of the plunder of 

 which would certainly be a compass, or that they 



