122 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



firmament : frou* wlu ice it lias become necessary to those who 

 navigate the seas." 



Brunetto Latini, a grammarian of Florence, and preceptor 

 of Dante, settled in Paris about the year 1260, and composed a 

 work entitled the " Treasure," in which he distinctly describes 

 the process and the consequence of magnetizing a needle. He 

 also went to England, and, in a letter of which fragments have 

 been published, writes thus: — "Friar Bacon showed me a mag- 

 net, an ugly and black stone, to which iron doth willingly cling: 

 you rub a needle upon it, the which needle, being placed upon 

 a point, remains suspended and turns against the Star, even 

 though the night be stormy and neither star nor moon be seen ; 

 and thus the mariner is guided on his way." 



The Italian Jesuit Riccioli, in his work upon Geography and 

 Hydrography, states, that before 1270, the French mariners used 

 " a magnetized needle, which they kept floating in a sjriall 

 vessel of water, supported on two tubes, so as not to sink.' 



All these authors agree in fixing the period at which the use 

 of the needle was popularized in Europe, at the latter part of 

 the twelfth and the commencement of the thirteenth century. 

 Not one of them mentions the inventor by name, or even indi- 

 cates his nation. This circumstance leads to the conviction that 

 it was unknown to them, and that, consequently, the inventor was 

 not a European. The theory that the Europeans obtained it 

 from the Arabians, and the Arabians from the Chinese, is sup- 

 ported by the following facts: 



A manuscript work, written by an Arabian named Bailak, a 

 native of Kibdjak, and entitled " The Merchant's Guide in the 

 Purchase of Stones," thus speaks of the loadstone in the year 

 1242: — "Among the properties of the magnet, it is to be 

 noticed that the captains who sail in the Syrian waters, when 

 the night is dark, take a vessel of water, upon which they place 

 a needle buried in the pith of a reed, and which thus floats 

 ipon the* water. Then they take a loadstone as big as the ,nalm 



