THE MAKIKERS COMPASS. 451 



But in spite of the growth of trade and navigation in Italy and 

 Spain, many years had yet to elapse after the fall of the Eoman 

 empire ere the gates of the Atlantic were once more opened to 

 the navigators of the Mediterranean. It was not before the 

 middle of the thirteenth century, after Seville and a great part 

 of the Andalusian coast had been wrested from the Moors by 

 Ferdinand of Castile, that the Italian and Catalonian seafarers, 

 encouraged by privileges and remissions of duties, began to visit 

 the port of Cadiz, where they met with merchants from Portugal 

 and Biscay. Soon after, and most probably in consequence of 

 the connexions thus formed, we find Italian ships visiting the 

 ports of England and the Netherlands. About 1316, Ge- 

 noese vessels began to carry goods to England ; and somewhat 

 later the "Venetians, whose visits are not mentioned by the 

 chroniclers before 1323. 



Thus after a long interruption we see the seamen of the 

 Mediterranean at length resuming the track to the Atlantic 

 ports that had been struck out more than thirty centuries before 

 by their predecessors the Phoenicians. But their voyages to the 

 western ocean took place under circumstances much more 

 favourable than those which had attended the men of Tyre and 

 Carthage in their adventurous expeditions. Not only the better 

 construction of their ships, but still more the use of the mariner's 

 compass, for which Europe is probably indebted to the Arabs, 

 who in their turn owed its knowledge to the Chinese, enabled 

 them to steer more boldly into the open sea, aDd regardless of 

 the bendings of the coasts to reach their journey's end by a less 

 circuitous route. The period when the magnetic needle was 

 first made use of by the Mediterranean navigators is not exactly 

 known, but so much is certain that it did good service long be- 

 fore the time of Flavio Grioja (1302), to whom its discovery has 

 been erroneously ascribed, though he may have introduced some 

 improvement in the arrangement of the compass. Humboldt 

 tells us in his "Cosmos," that in the satirical poem of Guyot de 

 Provens, "La Bible " (1190), and in the description of Palestine 

 by Jaques de Vitry, bishop of Ptolemais (1204—1215), the sea- 

 compass is mentioned as a well-known instrument. Dante also 

 speaks of the needle which points to the stars (Paradise, xii. 29); 

 and in a nautical work by Eaimundus Lullus of Majorca, written 

 in the year 1286, we find another proof of a much earlier 



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