=A.D. 1282.=--Baïlak, native of Kibdjak, wrote this year, in Arabic, his book on “Stones,” wherein he says that he saw during his voyage from Tripoli to Alexandria, in 1242, the captains of the Syrian sea construct a compass in the following manner: “When the night is so dark as to conceal from view the stars which might direct their course according to the position of the four cardinal points, they take a basin full of water, which they shelter from wind by placing it in the interior of the vessel; they then drive a needle into a wooden peg or a corn-stalk, so as to form the shape of a cross, and throw it into the basin of water prepared for the purpose, on the surface of which it floats. They afterwards take a loadstone of sufficient size to fill the palm of the hand, or even smaller; bring it to the surface of the water, give to their hands a rotatory motion towards the right so that the needle turns on the water’s surface; they then suddenly and quickly withdraw their hands, when the two points of the needle face north and south. I have seen them, with my own eyes, do that during my voyage at sea from Tripolis to Alexandria.” REFERENCES.--E. Salverte, “Phil. of Magic,” New York, 1847, Vol. II. pp. 221–222, note; “American Journal of Science and Arts,” Vol. XL. p. 247; Davis, “The Chinese,” Vol. III. p. xii; Klaproth, “Lettre à M. de Humboldt,” pp. 59, 60, 67; Knight, “Mech. Dict.,” Vol. II. pp. 1371 and 1397; “Electro-Magn. Phenom.,” by T. A. Lyons, New York, 1901, Vol. II. p. 564. =A.D. 1302.=--Gioia--Goia (Flavio or Joannes), an Italian pilot reported born at Positano, near Amalfi, is said by Flamnius Venanson (“De l’invention de la boussole nautique,” Naples, 1808, pp. 138 and 168) to be the real inventor of the mariner’s compass. This view is supported by Briet (Philippe), “Annales Mundi,” Vol. VI: Géog. et Hydrog., lib. x. cap. 8; by Voltaire (“Essai sur les Mœurs,” 1819, Vol. III. chap. cxli.), and by many others, but Klaproth (“Lettre ...” 1834, pp. 132–136) quotes Anthony of Bologna, called the Panormitan, as saying that Gioia lived in the fourteenth century and wrote both “_Prima dedit nautis usum magnetis Amalphis_” and “_Inventrix præclara fuit magnetis Amalphis_.” He adds that a statement to the same effect was made by Arrigi Brechmann in his “Historia Pandectarum Amalphitorum,” Dissertatio I, No. 22, Neapoli, 1735, p. 925, but that both are equally incorrect, for Gioja could not have invented an instrument which had already been in use more than a hundred years before his time.[19]