See _The Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama_, Hakluyt Soc, 1869; note to
chap. xv. by the Hon. H. E. J. Stanley, p. 138.) Also the Arabs that
navigated the Red Sea at the same period are shown by Varthema to have
used the mariner's chart and compass (_Travels_, p. 31).

Again, it appears that compasses of a primitive description, which can
hardly be supposed to have been brought from Europe, were employed in
the East Indies certainly as early as several years previous to the
close of the 16th century. In William Barlowe's _Navigator's Supply_,
published in 1597, we read:--"Some fewe yeeres since, it so fell out
that I had severall conferences with two East Indians which were brought
into England by master Candish [Thomas Cavendish], and had learned our
language: The one of them was of Mamillia [Manila] in the Isle of Luzon,
the other of Miaco in Japan. I questioned with them concerning their
shipping and manner of sayling. They described all things farre
different from ours, and shewed, that in steade of our Compas, they use
a magneticall needle of sixe ynches long, and longer, upon a pinne in a
dish of white _China_ earth filled with water; In the bottome whereof
they have two crosse lines, for the foure principall windes; the rest of
the divisions being reserved to the skill of their Pilots." Bailak
Kibdjaki, also, an Arabian writer, shows in his _Merchant's Treasure_, a
work given to the world in 1282, that the magnetized needle, floated on
water by means of a splinter of wood or a reed, was employed on the
Syrian seas at the time of his voyage from Tripoli to Alexandria (1242),
and adds:--"They say that the captains who navigate the Indian seas use,
instead of the needle and splinter, a sort of fish made out of hollow
iron, which, when thrown into the water, swims upon the surface, and
points out the north and south with its head and tail" (Klaproth,
_Lettre_, p. 57). E. Wiedemann, in _Erlangen Sitzungsberichte_ (1904, p.
330), translates the phrase given above as splinter of wood, by the term
wooden cross. Furthermore, although the sailors in the Indian vessels in
which Niccola de' Conti traversed the Indian seas in 1420 are stated to
have had no compass, still, on board the ship in which Varthema, less
than a century later, sailed from Borneo to Java, both the mariner's
chart and compass were used; it has been questioned, however, whether in
this case the compass was of Eastern manufacture (_Travels of
Varthema_, Intro