[80] “I John Maundevylle, knight, alle be it I be not worthi, that was born in England, in the Town of Seynt Albones, passed the See, in the zeer of our Lord Jesu Crist mcccxxii, in the Day of Seynt Michelle; and hidre to have ben long tyme over the See, and have seyn and gon thorghe manye dyverse Londes, and many Provynces and Kingdomes and Iles, and have passed thorghe Tartarye, Percye, Ermonye, the litylle and the grete; thorghe Lybye, Caldee, and a gret partie of Ethiope; thorghe Amazoyne, Inde the lasse and the more, a gret partie; and thorghe out many othere Iles, that ben abouten Inde.... And zee schulle undirstonde, that I have put this Boke out of Latyn into Frensche and translated it azen out of Frensche into Englyssche, that every Man of my Nacioun may undirstonde it.”—MS. in Cottonian library, marked Titus. c. xvi. The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundevile, Kt. By J. O. Halliwell. London, 1849. Prologue. pp. 4, 5. [81] Herodotus: Melpomene xlii. [82] Caius Plinius Secundus, a Roman writer, born A. D. 23, and died A. D. 79. Hanno’s expedition was undertaken about 570 B. C. [83] Eudoxus of Cyzicus, a Greek navigator, lived about 130 B. C. Ptolemy Lathyrus began his reign B. C. 117. Cornelius Nepos flourished in the century before the Christian era. [84] Supposed to have been in the year of the building of Rome, 691. [85] Suevi, the ancient inhabitants of that part of Germany between the Danube and the Baltic Sea. [86] Historia Naturalis. lib. ii. cap. lxvii. [87] “In Christian Europe the earliest mention of the use of the magnetic needle occurs in the politico-satirical poem, called _La Bible_, by Guyot, of Provence, in 1190, and in the description of Palestine by Jacobus, of Vitry, Bishop of Ptolemais, between 1204 and 1215. Dante (in his _Parad._ xii., 29) refers, in a simile, to the needle (_ago_) ‘which points to the star.’” “Navarrete, in his _Discurso histórico sobre los progresos del Arte de Navegar en España_, 1802, p. 28, recalls a remarkable passage in the Spanish _Leyes de las Partidas_ (II. tit. ix., ley 28), of the middle of the thirteenth century: ‘The needle, which guides the seaman in the dark night, and shows him, both in good and bad weather, how to direct his course, is the intermediary agent (_medianera_) between the loadstone (_la piedra_) and the north star.’ ... See the passage in _Las Siete Partidas del sabio Rey Don Alonso el ix._ (according to the usually adopted chronological order, Alonso the Xth). Madrid, 1829. t. i. p. 473.”—Humboldt: Cosmos. Otté’s trans. vol. ii. p. 629, and note. [88] “_La magnete piere laide et noire. Ob ete fer volenters se joint. Lon touchet ob une aguilet. Et en festue lon fischie. Puis lon mette en laigue et se tient desus. Et la point se torne contre lestoille. Quant la nuit feit tenebrous et lon ne voie estoile ne lune, poet li mariner tenir droite voie._”