CUAP. III.] 



SHIPS. 



443 



nut.^ Palladius, a Greek of the lower empire, to 

 Avliom is ascribed an account of the nations of India, 

 written in the fifth century^, adverts to this pecuharity 

 of construction, and connects it with the phenomenon 

 which forms so striking an incident in one of the tales 

 in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. In the story 

 of the "Three Eoyal Mendicants," the "Third Cal- 

 ender," as he is called in the old translation, relates to 

 the ladies of Bagdad, in whose house he is enter- 

 tained, how he and his companions lost their course, 

 when sailing; in the Indian Ocean, and found them- 

 selves in the vicinity of " the mountain of loadstone 

 towards which the current carried them with violence, 

 and when the ships approached it they fell asunder, and 

 the nails and everything that was of iron flew from them 

 towards the loadstone." 



The learned commentator. Lane, says that several 

 Arab writers describe this mountain of loadstone, and 

 amongst others he instances El Caswini, who lived in 

 the latter half of the thirteenth century,^ Edrisi, the 

 Arab geographer, likewise alludes to it ; but the inven- 

 tion belongs to an earlier age, and Palladius, in de- 

 scribing Ceylon, says that the magnetic rock is in the 

 adjacent islands called Maniola^ (Maldives ?), and that 

 ships coming within the sphere of its influence are 

 irresistibly drawn towards it, and lose all power of 

 progress except in its direction. Hence it is essential, 

 he adds, that vessels sailing for Ceylon should he fastened 

 with icooden instead of iroti bolts.^ 



^ Boats thus sewn together existed 

 at an early period on the coast of 

 Arabia as well as of Ceylon. Odoric 

 of Friuli saw them at Ormus in the 

 fourteenth century (Ilnldiii/f, vol. ii. 

 p. 35) ; and the construction of ships 

 without ii'on was not peculiar to the 

 Indian seas, as Homer mentions that 

 the boat built by Ulysses was put 

 together with wooden pegs, yofKpoiaiv, 

 instead of bolts. Odys. v. 249. 



"^ The tract alluded to is usually 



Imown as the ti*eatise de Mwihus 

 Brachmanorum, and ascribed to St. 

 Ambrose. For an account of it see 

 Vol. I. Ft. V. ch. i. p. 538. 



3 Lane's Arabian NUjhts, vol. i. 

 ch. iii. n. 72, p. 242. 



4 ''"Ecrrt Ct tSiKuJQ to. Sianfpwvra 

 ttXoIu i'lQ tKch'Tjv Ti)v fityciXrjv vijaov 

 dvtv (Tihlpov i-TTtovp'ioiQ £i)Xi')'oit' Kfira- 

 (TKtvaapiva.'''' — Palladius, in Pseudo- 

 CalHsfhenes, lib. iii. c. vii. But the 

 fable of the loadstone mountain is 



