[251] Among other books, the De Naturis Rerum of Nekham, 1157-1217, Rolls Series, p. 183.
The editor, Mr. Thomas Wright, remarks in his preface, xxxv.:—“The mariner’s compass, in a rude form, was in use among the sailors in Western Europe at an early period, and ... instead of being borrowed from the East, as is generally supposed, it seems to have been invented in this part of the world. Of course I do not mean to say that it was not invented in other parts also.” It is explicitly noticed in a Chinese Encyclopædia finished in A.D. 121 (Sir J. Davis, “The Chinese,” &c., ii 185). But Chinese chronology is always suspicious, and, even if this date be correct, there is no evidence to show that the invention ever reached the West. The Chinese seem to have guarded their discoveries and inventions with a jealous eye. Their valuable and accurate astronomical observations were only laid open to Europe by the Jesuits, more than two thousand years after they were made. The printing press was not invented in Europe until the fifteenth century, yet Feng Tao had invented block-printing in China in the tenth (Giles’ “Chinese Literature,” p. 210). According to their own account, the Chinese have used tea since the year 2737 B.C. It was not heard of in Europe until after A.D. 1517, and did not become generally known until the seventeenth century. Brunetto Latini (1230-94), quoted by Davis, gives a curious, but only too probable a reason for the slow progress of the compass in Christendom: “No master mariner dares to use (it), lest he should fall under the suspicion of being a magician.”
[252] Ferishta, “Hist. of the Rise of Mahomedan Power,” &c., trans. by General J. Briggs, 1829, ii. 312.
[253] See Prof. Dowson’s note in Elliot, iv. 268.
[254] Grose gives two plates of these “Ancient Gun Carts” in his “Military Antiquities,” i. 407. They are mentioned in the Acts of the Scotch Parliament, 52 of James II. and 55 of James III.
[255] Favé, Hist. et Tact. des Troit Armes, p. 12. Grewenitz, Traité de l’Organ., &c., de l’Artillerie, p. 28. Wheeled gun-carriages were so little known to the general public as late as 1548, that Rabelais specially mentions some “pieces d’Artillerie sus roue” in his account of a sham fight at Rome in this year. “La Sciomachie,” in his works, ed. by Burgaud des Marets and Rathery, ii. 568.
[256] Elliot, iv. 100.
[257] Elliot, iv. 117.
[258] iv. 65.
[259] “Nullis bombardis nec aliis hujus generis tormentis utuntur.” Epist. Indicæ, M. Gaapari Belgæ, p. 38.