(2) Guyot de Provins, a satirist of Languedoc, in his poem, _La Bible_, written about 1200, wishes the Pope would more nearly resemble the Pole-star,[287] which always stands immovable in the firmament and guides the sailor. Even in darkness and mist can the Pole-star make itself felt. For the mariner has only to place in a vessel of water a straw pierced by a needle which has been rubbed with a black and ugly stone, that will draw iron to itself; and the point of the needle unfailingly turns towards the Pole-star. [Footnote 287: "La tresmontaine."] (3) Jacques de Vitry, the French historian-bishop, writing about 1218, in his _Historia Orientalis_, speaks of "the iron needle which always turns to the North Star after it has touched the magnet" or "adamant."[288] [Footnote 288: "Acus ferrea, postquam adamantem contigerit, ad stellam septentrionalem ... semper convertitur; unde valde necessarium est navigantibus in mari."] (4) "An unknown singer of the same period" speaks of sailors to Friesland, Venice, Greece or Acre, finding in the Pole-star a sign-post in heaven. Even in darkness and mist the star can still help them, for it has the same power as the magnet of attracting iron. So mariners attach an iron needle to a piece of cork and rub it with a black lodestone. The cork and needle are then put into water, and never fail to point to the north. (5) Brunetto Latini, writing about 1260, tells how Roger Bacon showed him[289] a magnet, a stone black and ugly, and explained its use. If one rubbed a needle with it, and then put the needle, fixed to a straw, in water, the point of the needle always turned towards "the Star." By this the sailor could hold a straight course, whether the stars were visible or no. [Footnote 289: In Oxford, A.D. 1258. This is not a very certain tradition.] (6) In the _Landnamabok_, or Icelandic Book of Settlement, the main text of which was finished before 1148, there occurs a passage, probably added about 1300,[290] which describes a voyage of the ninth century (_c._ 868) to Iceland, and explains the use of ravens to direct this early course--"for at that time the sailors of the northern countries had not yet any lodestone." [Footnote 290: See Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_, 50. "The _Landnamabok_ was written by Are Torgillson Frode, who died in 1148;" but "the passage here in question first occurs in a copy or revision by Hauk Erlandsson, who lived at the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth."] (7) The Arabic author of the _Baïlak el Kibjaki_, or "Handbook for Merchants in the Science of Stones," relates how, in 1242, on a voyage from Tripoli to Alexandria, he himself witnessed the use of the polarized needle. He adds that Moslem merchants sailing to India, instead of the magnet-needle attached to a straw, tube or cork, used a hollow iron fish which, thrown into water, pointed north and south.