CHAP. III.] 



SHIPS. 



443 



nut. 1 PALLADIUS, a Greek of the lower empire, to 

 whom is ascribed an account of the nations of India, 

 written in the fifth century 2 , adverts to this peculiarity 

 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 feh 1 asunder, and 

 the nails and everything that was of iron flew from them 

 towards the loadstone." 



The learned commentator, LAXE, 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. 3 EDEISI, 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 Maniolse (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 be fastened 

 with wooden instead of iron bolts. 4 ' 



1 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 (HaJduyt, vol. ii. 

 p. 35) ; and the construction of ships 

 without iron was not peculiar to the 

 Indian seas, as Homer mentions that 

 the boat built by Ulysses was put 

 together with woo'denpegs, y<'-.n$oimv, 

 instead of bolts. Odys. v. 249. 



2 The tract alluded to is usually 



known as the treatise de Mvribus 

 Brachmanorum, and ascribed to St. 

 Ambrose. For an account of it see 

 Vol. I. Pt. v. ch. i. p. 538. 



3 LANE'S Arabian Nights, vol. i. 

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



4 "*E<rri ci IfiKujQ TO. diairfpwvra 

 rrXoia tig tKiivrjv TI}V fitya\i)v viiaov 

 drtv oifijoov iiriovpioig vXfi'oi rarrr- 

 ff rafffitra." PALLADITS, in Psetldo- 

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

 fable of the loadstone mountain is 



