ion of the Bear, supposing the
virtue of the Bear to prevail in the stone and to be transferred to the
iron. Paracelsus asserted that there are stars, endowed with the power of
the loadstone, which attract to themselves iron. Levinus Lemnius describes
and praises the compass[13], and infers its antiquity on certain grounds;
he does not divulge the hidden miracle which he propounds. In the kingdom
{4} of Naples the Amalfians were the first (so it is said) to construct the
mariners' compass: and as Flavius Blondus says the Amalfians[14] boast, not
without reason, that they were taught by a certain citizen, Johannes Goia,
in the year thirteen hundred after the birth of Christ. That town is
situated in the kingdom of Naples not far from Salerno, near the promontory
of Minerva; and Charles V. bestowed that principality on Andrea Doria, that
great Admiral, on account of his signal naval services. Indeed it is plain
that no invention of man's device has ever done more for mankind than the
compass: some notwithstanding consider that it was discovered by others
previously and used in navigation, judging from ancient writings and
certain arguments and conjectures. The knowledge of the little mariners'
compass seems to have been brought into Italy by Paolo, the Venetian[15],
who learned the art of the compass in the Chinas about the year MCCLX.; yet
I do not wish the Amalfians to be deprived of an honour so great as that of
having first made the construction common in the Mediterranean Sea.
Goropius[16] attributes the discovery to the Cimbri or Teutons, forsooth
because the names of the thirty-two winds inscribed on the compass are
pronounced in the German tongue by all ship-masters, whether they be
French, British, or Spaniards; but the Italians describe them in their own
vernacular. Some think that Solomon, king of Judaea, was acquaint with the
use of the mariners' compass, and made it known to his ship-masters in the
long voyages when they brought back such a power of gold from the West
Indies: whence also, from the Hebrew word _Parvaim_[17], Arias Montanus
maintains that the gold-abounding regions of Peru are named But it is more
likely to have come from the coast of lower Aethiopia, from the region of
Cephala, as others relate. Yet that account seems to be less true, inasmuch
as the Phoenicians, on the frontier of Judaea, who were most skilled in
navigation in former ages (a people whose talents, work, and counsel
Solomon made u