onderful instrument, which they had from Europe a long time before
the Portuguese conquests. For, first, their compasses are exactly like
ours, and they buy them of Europeans as much as they can, scarce daring
to meddle with their needles themselves. Secondly, it is certain that
the old navigators only coasted it along, which I impute to their want
of this instrument to guide and instruct them in the middle of the
ocean.... I have nothing but argument to offer touching this matter,
having never met with any person in Persia or the Indies to inform me
when the compass was first known among them, though I made inquiry of
the most learned men in both countries. I have sailed from the Indies to
Persia in Indian ships, when no European has been aboard but myself. The
pilots were all Indians, and they used the forestaff and quadrant for
their observations. These instruments they have from us, and made by our
artists, and they do not in the least vary from ours, except that the
characters are Arabic. The Arabs are the most skilful navigators of all
the Asiatics or Africans; but neither they nor the Indians make use of
charts, and they do not much want them; some they have, but they are
copied from ours, for they are altogether ignorant of perspective." The
observations of Chardin, who flourished between 1643 and 1713, cannot be
said to receive support from the testimony of some earlier authorities.
That the Arabs must have been acquainted with the compass, and with the
construction and use of charts, at a period nearly two centuries
previous to Chardin's first voyage to the East, may be gathered from the
description given by Barros of a map of all the coast of India, shown to
Vasco da Gama by a Moor of Guzerat (about the 15th of July 1498), in
which the bearings were laid down "after the manner of the Moors," or
"with meridians and parallels very small (or close together), without
other bearings of the compass; because, as the squares of these
meridians and parallels were very small, the coast was laid down by
these two bearings of N. and S., and E. and W., with great certainty,
without that multiplication of bearings of the points of the compass
usual in our maps, which serves as the root of the others." Further, we
learn from Osorio that the Arabs at the time of Gama "were instructed in
so many of the arts of navigation, that they did not yield much to the
Portuguese mariners in the science and practice of maritime matters."
(