ght be passed by travellers, or lakes frequented by
fishermen; but we have no knowledge of any ship that could endure the
violence of the ocean before the ark of Noah.

As the tradition of the deluge has been transmitted to almost all the
nations of the earth, it must be supposed that the memory of the means,
by which Noah and his family were preserved, would be continued long
among their descendants, and that the possibility of passing the seas
could never be doubted.

What men know to be practicable, a thousand motives will incite them to
try; and there is reason to believe, that from the time that the
generations of the postdiluvian race spread to the seashores, there were
always navigators that ventured upon the sea, though, perhaps, not
willingly beyond the sight of land.

Of the ancient voyages little certain is known, and it is not necessary
to lay before the reader such conjectures as learned men have offered to
the world. The Romans, by conquering Carthage, put a stop to great part
of the trade of distant nations with one another, and because they
thought only on war and conquest, as their empire increased, commerce
was discouraged; till under the latter emperours, ships seem to have
been of little other use than to transport soldiers.

Navigation could not be carried to any great degree of certainty without
the compass, which was unknown to the ancients. The wonderful quality by
which a needle or small bar of steel, touched with a loadstone or
magnet, and turning freely by equilibration on a point, always preserves
the meridian, and directs its two ends north and south, was discovered,
according to the common opinion, in 1299, by John Gola of Amalfi, a town
in Italy.

From this time it is reasonable to suppose that navigation made
continual, though slow, improvements, which the confusion and barbarity
of the times, and the want of communication between orders of men so
distant as sailors and monks, hindered from being distinctly and
successively recorded.

It seems, however, that the sailors still wanted either knowledge or
courage, for they continued for two centuries to creep along the coast,
and considered every head-land as impassable, which ran far into the
sea, and against which the waves broke with uncommon agitation.

The first who is known to have formed the design of new discoveries, or
the first who had power to execute his purposes, was Don Henry the
fifth[2], son of John, the first king of