124 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



the Government edifices invariably being built to face the south. 

 A Chinese work of authority, composed about the year 1000, 

 contains this passage: — " Fortune-tellers rub the point of a 

 needle with a loadstone to give it the power of indicating the 

 south." 



A medical natural history, published in China in 1112, speaks 

 even of the variation of the needle, — a phenomenon first noticed 

 iri Europe by Christopher Columbus in 1492: — "When," it 

 says, "a point of iron is touched by a loadstone, it receives the 

 power of indicating the south : still, it declines towards the east, 

 and does not point exactly to the south." This observation, 

 made at the beginning of the twelfth century, was confirmed by 

 magnetic experiments made at Pekin, in 1780, by a Frenchman ; 

 only the latter, finding the variation to be from the north, set it 

 down as from 2° to 2° 30' to the west, while the Chinese, per . 

 sisting in calling it a variation from the south, set it down as 

 being from 2° to 2° 30' to the east. 



Thus, the Chinese, who were acquainted with the polarity of 

 a magnetized needle as early as the year 121, and who noticed 

 the variation in 1112, may be safely supposed to have employed 

 it at sea in the long voyages which they made in the seventh 

 and eighth centuries, the route of which has come down to 

 us. Their vessels sailed from Canton, through the Straits of 

 Malacca, to the Malabar coast, to the mouths of the Indus 

 and the Euphrates. It is difficult to believe that, aware of 

 the use to which the needle might be applied, they did not so 

 apply it. 



While thus claiming for the Chinese the first knowledge and 

 application of the polarity of the needle, we may say, incidentally, 

 that it is now certain that they made numerous other discoveries 

 of importance long before the Europeans. They knew the at- 

 tractive power of amber in the first century of our era, and a 

 Chinese author said, in 324, "The magnet attracts iron, and 

 amber attracts mustard-seed." They ascribed the tides to the 



