[81] Herodotus: Melpomene xlii.
[82] Caius Plinius Secundus, a Roman writer, born A. D. 23, and died A. D. 79. Hanno’s expedition was undertaken about 570 B. C.
[83] Eudoxus of Cyzicus, a Greek navigator, lived about 130 B. C. Ptolemy Lathyrus began his reign B. C. 117. Cornelius Nepos flourished in the century before the Christian era.
[84] Supposed to have been in the year of the building of Rome, 691.
[85] Suevi, the ancient inhabitants of that part of Germany between the Danube and the Baltic Sea.
[86] Historia Naturalis. lib. ii. cap. lxvii.
[87] “In Christian Europe the earliest mention of the use of the magnetic needle occurs in the politico-satirical poem, called La Bible, by Guyot, of Provence, in 1190, and in the description of Palestine by Jacobus, of Vitry, Bishop of Ptolemais, between 1204 and 1215. Dante (in his Parad. xii., 29) refers, in a simile, to the needle (ago) ‘which points to the star.’”
“Navarrete, in his Discurso histórico sobre los progresos del Arte de Navegar en España, 1802, p. 28, recalls a remarkable passage in the Spanish Leyes de las Partidas (II. tit. ix., ley 28), of the middle of the thirteenth century: ‘The needle, which guides the seaman in the dark night, and shows him, both in good and bad weather, how to direct his course, is the intermediary agent (medianera) between the loadstone (la piedra) and the north star.’ ... See the passage in Las Siete Partidas del sabio Rey Don Alonso el ix. (according to the usually adopted chronological order, Alonso the Xth). Madrid, 1829. t. i. p. 473.”—Humboldt: Cosmos. Otté’s trans. vol. ii. p. 629, and note.
[88] “La magnete piere laide et noire. Ob ete fer volenters se joint. Lon touchet ob une aguilet. Et en festue lon fischie. Puis lon mette en laigue et se tient desus. Et la point se torne contre lestoille. Quant la nuit feit tenebrous et lon ne voie estoile ne lune, poet li mariner tenir droite voie.”
[89] The Monthly Magazine, or British Register. London, 1802. vol. xiii. part 1. p. 449. The Life of Prince Henry of Portugal. By Henry Major. London, 1868. pp. 58, 59.