98 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



of the earth now begin. In a treatise attributed to St. 

 Ambrose, 1 a Theban story-teller recounts exactly the same 

 facts, but says the mountains are on the thousand islands of 

 the Arabian and Persian sea, called "Mammoles." Yet, 

 singularly enough, the Chinese author So Soung, 2 writing 

 between 1023 and IQ 63> completely corroborates Ptolemy, 

 and says that u at the capes and at the points of Khanghai 

 (the southern sea on the coasts of Tonquin and Cochin 

 China), the waters are low and there are many magnet 

 stones, so that if the great foreign ships which are covered 

 with iron plates approach them, they are arrested, and 

 none of them can pass by these places." So Soung quotes 

 from a still earlier work, appropriately entitled "memoirs 

 on the extraordinary things seen in the southern countries." 



Even more curious than the support afforded to Ptolemy 

 is the reference to great foreign ships covered with iron 

 plates: which raises the question of whether the Norse iron- 

 clad vessels made so long a voyage at so far distant a 

 period. The Anglo-Saxons, ordinarily, before going into 

 battle hung their shields along the gunwales of their ships, 3 

 and the Icelanders did so in stormy weather or in time of 

 peril.* Whether, therefore, any Icelandic vessel managed 

 to get as far as China, and being in danger from the reefs 

 mentioned by So Soung, hung out her shields, is a matter 

 of curious conjecture. The Icelanders had explored the 

 American coast many years before; but there is not even a 

 legend of a Viking ship ever sailing to China. 



By the I2th century the myth of the magnetic rocks 

 had reached the north of Europe. In one of the earliest of 

 the Dutch poems, which lyongfellow characterizes as "the 



1 De Moribus Brachmannorum. Ed. Bissaeus. L/ond.. 1665, p. 59. 

 2 Thou King Pen Thsao., cit. by Klaproth (cit. sup.), p. 117. 



3 "Then from the wall, the Scylding warder, who had charge of the 

 cliff, beheld them carrying over the gunwale their bright shields, their 

 material of war ready for use." Beowulf (Anglo-Saxon Epic.) Trans, by 

 T. Arnold. Loud., 1876. 



4 Hakonar Saga. Vigfusson. L,ond., 1887, 106, 291. 



