INVENTION OF THE COMPASS. 



125 



Influence of the moon in the ninth century. Printing was in- 

 vented in the province of Chin about the year 920, and gun- 

 powder would seem to have been made there long before Berthold 

 Schwartz mixed it in 1330. Still, it is not necessary to resort 

 to the argument of analogy to support the claims of the Chi- 

 nese to this admirable invention : the direct evidence, as we have 

 rehearsed it, is amply sufficient. 



CHINESE JUNK. 



A century ago, Havio Oioia, a captain or pilot of Amalfi, in 

 the kingdom of Naples, was recognised throughout Europe as 

 the true inventor of the compass- He lived in the beginning 

 of the fourteenth century, and biographers have even fixed the 

 date of the memorable invention at the year 1303. The prin- 

 cipal foundation for this assertion was the following line from a 



