Meanwhile there arrived on the scene the best friend mariner ever had. Up till now the compass had not been used. It is possible and extremely probable that from very early times the Chinese understood the communicating of the magnetic fluid to iron, and the marvellous and mysterious power which that iron possesses when thus magnetised. One may take it that the Chinese introduced this notion to the famous Arabian seamen sailing between the Far East and the east coast of Africa. Thus, via the Red Sea, this information of the utility of the magnetised needle for the use of seamen was brought into Europe. Prior to the tenth century the invention had gone no further than placing a bar of magnetised iron in the arms of a wooden figure on a pivot. In China the South took the place of North, and the former was indicated by the outstretched hand of the little man erected on the prow of the vessel, or by the bar of pulverised iron which the image held like a spear in its hands. With such magnetic indications the Chinese from the third century A.D. voyaged from Canton to Malabar and the Persian Gulf. By the second decade of the twelfth century the Chinese were using the water-compass. It was not seen in Europe till about the year 1190; or rather it is not mentioned till about that date. What is most probable is the suggestion that the sailors of Northern Europe first saw it at the time of the Crusades, and took back to their own ports the idea which the Arabian dhow skippers had employed for so many years in navigating the Indian Ocean. There is a clear reference in an old French ballad of the late twelfth century to the Pole-star and magnet:-- “By this star they go and come And their course and their way do keep: They call it the polar star. This guide is most certain. All the others move And change positions and turn; But this star moves not. An art they make, that cannot deceive, By the power of the magnet: A stone ugly and brown, To which iron spontaneously is drawn, They have: observing the right point. After they have touched it with a needle And in a straw have placed it They put it in water without other support, And the straws keep it afloat.”