358 COCHINCHINA. 
to iron ; and independent of the backwardness of the Chinese 
to shew their inventions to strangers, we may easily imagine 
that the Chinese mariner Avas equally ignorant of the nature and 
principles of magnetism with the Arab. Besides, it can scarcely 
be supposed that the proud and haughty Arabian, pluming 
himself in his superior skill in astronomical science and, by 
the use of his charts and his astrolabe, able to find his way 
through the pathless ocean, would regard with any other 
feeling than that of disdain the little insignificant rusty 
needle of the Chinese, swinging on its pivot, and surrounded 
with circles, signs, and hieroglyphics ; and that in all pro- 
bability he would consider it only as a part of the religious 
lumber which a foolish superstition had rendered sacred, and 
with which his little cabin is generally encumbered* 
That the use of the magnetic needle among the Chinese is 
of a very remote antiquity, I have had occasion to notice 
elsewhere ; and I again repeat, what I consider to be alone 
sufficient to establish the fact, that if any other argument 
were wanting to pro\'e the originality of the magnetic needle, 
as used in China for the purposes of navigation, the circum- 
stance of their having engrafted on it their most ancient and 
lavourite system of mythology, their constellations and cycles 
and, in sliort, the abstract of the elements of their judicial 
astrologv, goes a great way towards settling that point ; that 
a people so remarkably tenacious of ancient custom, and 
thinking so very meanly of all other nations, would never 
have submitted to incorporate their rooted superstitions, by 
en c raving on its margin the sacred and mystical characters of 
