AN ANCIENT FINNISH COMPASS. 141 



direct proof of such possession wholly wanting. A single 

 Finnish compass has been discovered for which the people 

 claim great antiquity, the card or scale of which is marked 

 for a latitude where the sunrise and sunset at the summer 

 and winter solstices differ by sixty degrees: 1 this condition, 

 curiously enough, being found along parallel 49 20' N., 

 which crosses Asia at the region which was the cradle of 

 primitive civilizations, and from which began the wan- 

 derings of the great family to which both Finns and Mon- 

 gols belong. 2 



A source from which knowledge of the mariner's com- 

 pass may have come to Wisbuy, is thus found in its 

 possible Finnish origin. How the Finns, if they had the 

 secret, came to part with it whether it was forced from 

 them by their Swedish masters, or whether they yielded it 

 up for the benefit of mankind in general, under the exhor- 

 tations of good St. Henry, the English bishop, who 

 entered their country in the train of Eric, or whether they 

 bartered it with other mariners at Wisbuy, until all the 

 world came to know of it is a matter of surmise with 

 which we are less concerned than we are with finding cor- 

 roboration of the conjecture that from the great maritime 

 exchange in the Baltic came the intelligence which 

 Neckam first recorded. 



The ancient sea laws of Wisbuy as I have said regu- 

 lated rights and duties on the high sea, and therefore dealt 

 with nautical crimes and offenses. Of these none is more 

 heinous than to falsify the compass, for as every one 

 knows, upon the accuracy of that instrument the safety of 



l Nouvelles Annales des Voyages. Paris, 1823, vol. xvii., 414. The 

 card instead of being divided into quadrants N. S. E. and W. has its four 

 cardinal points 60 to the east and west of North, and two 60 to the east 

 and west of South : the first two marking sunrise and sunset at the sum- 

 mer solstice, and the last two the same at the winter solstice. 



3 This region coincides closely with that in which Bailly conceived a 

 prehistoric people of high civilization to have arisen and from which it 

 migrated. (Lettres sur 1'Origine des Sciences. Paris, 1777.) See also 

 Ency. Brit., 7th ed. 





