Seated at the water-shed of the East and of the West--at the fountain of the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf--the Phœnicians passed down both, and issuing into the Indian and Atlantic oceans, visited the furthest regions of the earth. It was their province to gather the produce of every land; so must it have been their aim to collect the inventions of every people. If anywhere the magnetic needle had been discovered, they would have been sure to find it; and if applied only to the land, most certainly would they adapt it to their own element. This discovery required no high standard of science. It could not have been reasoned to _a priori_; by accident alone could it have been found out. There is in it, therefore, nothing to flatter the self-love of any, or to militate against referring it to the very earliest ages or the rudest people. The discovery is claimed by modern civilization, and is one of those upon which it most prides itself. The place, the inventor, the precise date are all known; and though by one section of literary men the honour is referred to China, and by another, indications of some sort of compass are admitted elsewhere, and at anterior dates, still the compass in its present shape, and in its practical use, is next to universally attributed to Flavio de Gioja, of Amalphi, in the year 1302. The perusal of the catalogue of the Escurial suggested to M. Villemain the remark, that most of the modern discoveries of which the date and the name of the inventor are set down as certain, were no more than inventions of the Arabs, which he had appropriated. Such in this case was the fact. Amalphi, the earliest of European commercial states, arose under the Greeks and the Saracens. To the latter people it owed the lead it took in instruction and navigation. Centuries and generations before Flavio de Gioja, the needle was known at Amalphi. The _magnet_,[137] in its attracting power, was well known to the Arabs, from the Greeks, Persians, and Jews. But they gave a new name, which shows that they had become acquainted with its polarity, which indicated the use to which, by them, it was applied, _Kiblah Nameh_. Finding the direction towards the _Kiblah_, of course it would serve to direct the caravan through the desert, and the caravel at sea. If additional proof be wanting, the name supplies it.