More than a thousand years before our
era, in the obscure age of Codrus, and about the time of the return of the
Heraclidae to the Peloponnesus, the Chinese had already magnetic carriages,
on which the movable arm of the figure of a man continually pointed to the
south, as a guide by which to find the way across the boundless grass plains
of Tartary; nay, even in the third century of our era, therefore at least
700 years before the use of the mariner's compass in European seas, Chinese
vessels navigated the Indian Ocean* under the direction of magnetic needles
pointing to the south.
[footnote] *Humboldt, 'Examen Critique de l'Hist. de la Geographie', t.
iii., p. 36.
I have shown, in another work, what advantages this means of topographical
direction, and the early knowledge and application of the magnetic needle
gave the Chinese geographers over the Greeks and Romans, to whom, for
instance, even the true direction of the Apennines and Pyrenees always
remained unknown.*
[footnote] *'Asie Centrale', t. i., Introduction, p. xxxviii-xlii. The
Western nations, the Greeks and the Romans, knew that magnetism could be
communicated to iron, 'and that that metal would retain it for a length of
time'. ("Sola haec materia ferri vires, a maguete lapide accipit,
'retinetque longo tempore.
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