Astronomy and Navigation are carried to so high a pitch of perfection, that it may reasonably be expected we shall soon have an exact knowledge of the whole surface of the globe. The ancients knew only a small part of it, because they had not the mariner's compass. Some people have pretended that the Arabs invented the compass, and used it a long time before we did, to trade on the Indian sea, as far as China; but this opinion has always appeared destitute of all probability; for there is no word in the Arab, Turkish, or Persian languages, which signifies the compass; they make use of the Italian word Bossola; they do not even at present know how to make a compass, nor give the magnetical quality to the needle, but purchase them from the Europeans. Father Maritini says, that the Chinese have been acquainted with the compass for upwards of 3000 years; but if that was the case, how comes it that they have made so little use of it? Why did they, in their voyages to Cochinchina, take a course much longer than was necessary? And why did they always confine themselves to the same voyages, the greatest of which were to Java and Sumatra? And why did not they discover, before the Europeans, an infinity of fertile islands, bordering on their own country, if they had possessed the art of navigating in the open seas? For a few years after the discovery of this wonderful property of the loadstone, the Portuguese doubled the Cape of Good Hope, traversed the African and Indian seas, and Christopher Columbus made his voyage to America. By a little consideration, it was easy to divine there were immense spaces towards the west; for, by comparing the known part of the globe, as for example, the distance of Spain to China, and attending to the revolution of the Earth and Heavens, it was easy to see that there remained a much greater extent towards the west to be discovered, than what they were acquainted with towards the east. It, therefore, was not from the defect of astronomical knowledge that the ancients did not find the new world, but only for want of the compass. The passages of Plato and Aristotle, where they speak of countries far distant from the Pillars of Hercules, seem to indicate that some navigators had been driven by tempest as far as America, from whence they returned with much difficulty; and it may be conjectured, that if even the ancients had been persuaded of the existence of this continent, they would not have even thought it possible to strike out the road, having no guide nor any knowledge of the compass.