“Although a knowledge of the attracting power of the loadstone, or of naturally magnetic iron, appears to have existed from time immemorial among the nations of the West, yet it is a well established and very remarkable historical fact, that the knowledge of the directive power of a magnetic needle, resulting from its relation to the magnetism of the earth, was possessed exclusively by a people occupying the eastern extremity of Asia. The Chinese for _more than a thousand years before our era_, at the obscurely known epoch of Codrus and the return of the Heraclidæ to the Peloponnesus, already employed magnetic cars, on which the figure of a man, whose movable outstretched arm pointed always to the south, guided them on their way across the vast grassy plains of Tartary. In the third century of our era, at least 700 years before the introduction of the compass in the European seas, Chinese vessels navigated the Indian[145] ocean with needles pointing to the south. I have shown in another work[146] what great advantages in respect to topographical knowledge the magnetic needle gave to the Chinese geographers over their _Greek_ and _Roman_ contemporaries, to whom for example, the true direction of the mountain chains of the Apennines and the Pyrenees always remained unknown.”[147] These writers conceive that they have settled the question by tracing the invention from the Chinese to the Arabs. This at least is established, that the Chinese had the compass at the period of the greatness of the Phœnicians, and if they did not use it on the ocean, traversing Tartary with it, brought it within reach of the Phœnicians, who, as I shall show, knew the stations through Tartary to China. Now, our instrument offered intrinsic evidence of a parentage wholly distinct from the Chinese. The _north_ is the leading point. The axis of the globe cut at right angles by the equator, gives the four points which we term _cardinal_, which are then subdivided into eight, sixteen, and thirty-two (the latter appears to be comparatively modern). These constitute the points which serve the mariner, and are employed in directing the course of the vessel and steering it. The circle is then divided, according to the astronomic measurement of the globe, into 360 degrees. These _Points_ and _Degrees_ are figured on a card affixed to the needle, and revolving with it on a pivot, so that the helmsman has the circle of the earth before him, and has to bring the vessel’s head (marked by a line in the cup in which the card and needle float) to that point of the circle towards which he is directed to steer.