THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
Marin mu’ 
Com pam. 
enumerated by Mas'iidi, 1 an Arabian naturalist and geographer of the tenth century, to 
whose works we shall presently refer. 2 * 
The numerous and distant peregrinations of the Arabs need not be followed. It will 
su!’r-i " state that they were acquainted with the whole of Southern Europe, the southern 
half >>f Asia, North- West Africa as far south as 10° north, and the eastern coasts of the 
same continent as far as Cape Corrientes. :! In the time of Soleiman they had described in 
detail the islands in the Strait of Suuda, and everything indicates that they had landed 
on the Moluccas, Madagascar, and the Canaries. The Arabs must therefore be credited 
with the discovery of the Great Pacific beyond China, although it is generally maintained 
th..t this ocean was first made known by the travels of Marco Polo in the fourteenth 
century. 4 (For .Arab maps of the 11th and 12th centuries, see Plate V.). 
Ouo of the most important results arising from the relations of the Arabs with China 
A believed to have been the introduction of the mariners’ compass. The property of the 
magnet was known to the Chinese from time immemorial, and they are reported to have 
applied it to navigation about the fourth century of our era, but this statement is not 
supported by sufficient evidence. The Arabs are supposed to have learnt the use of this 
marvellous apparatus in the East, and through them it is said to have passed to the 
sailors of the Mediterranean. Marco Polo does not, however, mention the mariners’ 
compass, and we have no certain knowledge that it was in use among Chinese sailors at 
a time long posterior to the Arab voyages of the tenth or eleventh centuries. The 
Eg\ ptians were accustomed to suspend the loadstone at the end of a string and to 
observe its motions. In its primitive form among sailors of the west the compass was 
-imply a needle that had been touched with the loadstone and was floated on a piece of 
cork or on a straw during the night or misty weather. In this form it was in use among 
nortl rn sailors as early as 1100 a.d., and it may quite well have developed in their 
Finds into a complete nautical instrument. For a long time there appears to have been 
a prejudice against its use among sailors. Roger Bacon is reported to have said that no 
master mariner dared use it, so great was the appearance of its being constructed under 
the influence of some infernal spirit. 5 
1 Flourished about 015 A.D. 
- ’•! l nil, Meadow - of Gold and Mines of Gems, translated by Aloys Sprenger, M.D., London, 1841 ; Les Prairies 
cl' Or, to xte et traduction, par MM. Barbier du Meyriard et Courteille, Paris, 1861. 
s See J. T. Bent, op. cit., p. 190. 
4 Jap ii. w-a known to the Arabs as the Wak-wak Islands. For an account of an expedition of a fleet, from Japan 
!' Ka-t Africa in a.d. 945, -<:e De Goege, Vers lag. krm. Akad. Wet. Amsterdam , 1881, ser. 2, part x., Afd. Lctterkunde, 
p. 180. 
The following is an extract from a letter from Latini to Cavalcanti describing a visit to Roger Bucou at Oxford, 
; uvntjy m the )cur 1258 : — “This discovery, which appears useful in so great a degree to all who travel by sea, 
ri ist ' main ■ < ab I until other times ; ln.-cause no mast r-mariner dare* to use it, lest he should fall under a supposition 
' f hi > b in.’ k magician ; nor would even the sailors venture them elves out to sea under his command, if he took with 
him in >n rurnent which carries so great an appearance of being constructed under the influence of some infernal 
pint. A time may come when there prejud < s which are of such great hindrance to researches into the secrets of 
