If these conclusions are correct, we may expect to find remnants of them still. In India proper, the Mussulman dominion, the invasion of Tatar and Patan, and the settlement of Arab tribes would have effaced the trace of such a colony: but Ceylon having remained free from such disturbance, we may not unreasonably look for this further confirmation—and we find it. There does exist such an Arab population[161] of 70,000 souls, where no Arabs ever entered as invaders or mercenaries. The Arabs of the Continent are military bodies—these are given to commerce; their own traditions carry them back nearly to the period of Sopater. They report their forefathers to have come by sea, flying from the persecutions of Andalmaleh.
No tribes were driven forth by these persecutions: compromised individuals only escaped.[162] The times and events prior to their conversion are held by the Mussulmans as those of ignominy; and, consequently, this population, having been by those refugees converted, dated from that period and forgot all that preceded it: they were grafted and took no account of the original stock. The same thing precisely has happened in Morocco.
On their conversion the secret, which neither Alexander could extort from Tyre, nor Rome from Carthage, would be surrendered, like the architecture of Mauritania, to Islam; and thus it was that Vasco di Gama, when he reached the Indian ocean, found the compass in common use. It provokes no remark: it was not then the Chinese compass, but the same as that which, in the Mediterranean, had been derived from the Saracens.[163]
The only objection which I have not disposed of, is that of Voltaire,—that the Saracens, if they had had the compass, would not have left to us the discovery of America. I will here remark, that it does not apply, because they did not navigate the Atlantic. It is good against the Phœnicians. But who can assert that they did not discover America?—the tradition of the Atlantic Island cannot be explained away:—knowing the dimensions of the earth they would not, like Columbus, mistake America for India.[164] Beyond the Atlantic are to be found traces of their worship, of their manufacture,[165] of their symbols,[166] and even of the instrument by which the way was found. The temples are placed according to the cardinal points.
Having now set aside every objection that has been raised, I proceed to the indications or proofs contained in classical writing. Homer speaks of vessels finding their way without pilots, gliding through the waters as if endowed with natural organs.[167] The passage, it is true, has been accepted as a poetic image;[168] in Virgil’s hands it is no more. He speaks of “keels feeling their way.” Homer was describing particular ships, and those Phœnician—the name is indeed Phæacean: a Hebrew lexicon will show that these two names apply to one people. The Phæacians were remarkable for industry, wealth, and refinement; they were distinguished by their “baths, beds, and changes of raiment.” They were εὐδαίμονας χαὶ ἰσοθέους, “happy and equal to the gods,” neither molesting nor being molested.[169] The daughter of their prince, Nausicaa, has been chosen as the type of industry and purity; they were, therefore, preeminently noble and surprisingly tranquil; such is the interpretation in Hebrew of the names by which they and their island were known—Phaik[170] and Carcar;[171] Phæacia,[172] and Corcyra. As if to prevent any doubt, Homer gives to the island another name, or epithet, Σχερίη, the Hebrew for “Mart.”[173] The three words, Phaik, Corkura, and Scheria, are meaningless in Greek, but descriptive in the Phæacian; and Homer’s lines, shadowing forth the mariner’s compass,[174] apply to their vessels.
By his golden arrow, Abaris “traversed the winds,” by it he “steered.” Pythagoras forced him to reveal his secret.[175] There was then a secret in reference to steering, not as to dexterity in conning a vessel, but in finding the point to which her course lay.
Hercules,[176] the symbol of Phœnician enterprise, departs on his expedition for opening navigation to the westward, with a cup. This cup he gets from Apollo, and it was destined of course to aid him on his way; here is the cup of water in which the needle was floated.[177]
The name of Hercules is given to a stone—that stone so called is the magnet. Why should the magnet have been called the stone of Hercules? The explanations offered are,—that it is emblematic of strength in its attraction; or that it was found at Heraclea.[178] Here is the magnet to polarise, floated in the cup.
Fuller alone has attributed to the Phœnicians this invention,[179] and he does so solely on account of the Heraclean stone. “It could have had no other meaning,” says he, “than the compass; possessing it, the Tyrians must have carefully concealed it, consequently there is nothing surprising in its having been lost;
“Sol’s golden bowl he entered to pass o’er
The hoary ocean’s stream, and reached the shore,
The sacred depths of venerable night.”—Stesichorus.