THE MAGNETIC MOUNTAINS. 97 



ried us toward it with violence, and when the ships were 

 almost close to it they fell asunder, and all the nails and 

 everything that was of iron flew from them towards the 

 lodestone." 1 



The germ of that story lies in the legend of the shepherd 

 Magnes, the iron nails in whose shoes held him fast to the 

 magnet rock on Mount Ida, which, as I have said in a 

 former chapter, Pliny copied from Nicander's now lost 

 poem. When Ptolemy wrote his geography 2 in the 2d 

 century of our era, he conceived the notion of enlarging 

 the rock and substituting a ship's fastenings for the shep- 

 herd's shoe-pegs ; and, in order to give to it verisimilitude, 

 he proceeded to locate the magnetic mountains in the sea 

 between Southern China and the coasts of Tonquin and 

 Cochin China, on certain islands which he calls Manioles. 

 But, as Nicander's shepherd did not have the nails of his 

 shoes pulled out by the magnetic attraction, Ptolemy, evi- 

 dently from scruples against venturing outside of the four 

 corners of the tradition, is careful not to say that the iron 

 is torn from the vessels, but only that " ships which have 

 iron nails are stopped, and that is why they are put to- 

 gether with wooden nails, in order that the Heraclean 

 stone which grows there may not attract them." The 

 story-teller of the Arabian Nights is equally wise as to the 

 materials wliich the lodestone will not attract; for the 

 dome on top of the lodestone mountain is of brass, and so 

 is the horseman thereon which the adventurous calendar 

 brings down with a leaden arrow from a brazen bow, and 

 after the sea magically submerges the mountain it is a man 

 of brass who appears in a boat to row the hero away from 

 the dangerous spot. 



The wanderings of the magnetic rocks over the surface 



*Lane: The Thousand and One Nights. Lond., 1859, 161. This col- 

 lection was first made known in Europe about the end of the I7th cen- 

 tury by Galland, from a manuscript brought from Syria dated 1584. The 

 stories probably date from about the middle of the isth century. 



2 Geography, lib. vii., c. 2. 

 7 



