CHAPTER III. 



How or when the tendency of a freely-suspended mag- 

 net to set itself in a nearly north and south direction was 

 first discovered is a question, the answer to which is prob- 

 ably forever lost. The civilized world remained in igno- 

 rance of the fact for nearly eighteen centuries after the 

 attractive effect of the lodestone had become well known. 

 Although, as I have already stated, it is not impossible to 

 conjecture that the phenomenon was familiar to the an- 

 cestors of primitive civilization, who, from the highlands 

 of Central Asia, dispersed in many races over the earth ; 

 yet the knowledge came to the people of the Middle Ages 

 anew, through the invention of the first and greatest of 

 electrical instruments the mariner's compass ; first, in its 

 utilization of the mysterious force existing in the magnet ; 

 greatest, in that it has contributed more than any other 

 product of human intelligence to the progress and welfare 

 of mankind. 



The obscurity which veils the discovery of the under- 

 lying principle of the compass in the remote past seems to 

 extend to all the circumstances in which that contrivance 

 originated. It has been ascribed to the Greeks, the Phoe- 

 nicians, the Etruscans, the Egyptians and the Chinese. 

 It is said to have first appeared on the ships of mediaeval 

 Italy, and yet to have been first known in mediaeval 

 France. It is also claimed as German, Arabian, English 

 and Norse. 



It is necessary to examine briefly the principal argu- 

 ments advanced in behalf of these several nations. In 

 this way we shall best perceive the conditions which 

 caused progress or checked it, and so trace through its 

 many channels the rise which we are following. 



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