[p] Capmany, Memorias Historicas, t. iii. preface, p. 11; and part 2, p. 131. His authority is Balducci Pegalotti, a Florentine writer upon commerce about 1340, whose work I have never seen. It appears from Balducci that the route to China was from Asoph to Astrakan, and thence, by a variety of places which cannot be found in modern maps, to Cambalu, probably Pekin, the capital city of China, which he describes as being one hundred miles in circumference. The journey was of rather more than eight months, going and returning; and he assures us it was perfectly secure, not only for caravans, but for a single traveller with a couple of interpreters and a servant. The Venetians had also a settlement in the Crimea, and appear, by a passage in Petrarch's letters, to have possessed some of the trade through Tartary. In a letter written from Venice, after extolling in too rhetorical a manner the commerce of that republic, he mentions a particular ship that had just sailed for the Black Sea. Et ipsa quidem Tanaim it visura, nostri enim maris navigatio non ultra tenditur; eorum vero aliqui, quos hæc fert, illic iter [instituent] eam egressuri, nec antea substituri, quàm Gange et Caucaso superato, ad Indos atque extremos Seres et Orientalem perveniatur Oceanum. En quo ardens et inexplebilis habendi sitis hominum mentes rapit! Petrarcæ Opera, Senil. 1. ii. ep. 3, p. 760 edit. 1581.
[q] Hist. de Languedoc, t. iii. p. 531; t. iv. p. 517. Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, t. xxxvii.
[r] Capmany, Memorias Historicas de Barcelona, t. i. part 2. See particularly p. 36.
[] Muratori, Dissert. 30. Denina, Rivoluzione d'Italia, 1. xiv. c. 11. The latter writer is of opinion that mulberries were not cultivated as an important object till after 1300, nor even to any great extent till after 1500; the Italian manufacturers buying most of their silk from Spain or the Levant.
[t] The history of Italian states, and especially Florence, will speak for the first country; Capmany attests the woollen manufacture of the second—Mem. Hist. de Barcel. t. i. part 3, p. 7, &c.; and Vaissette that of Carcassonne and its vicinity—Hist. de Lang. t. iv. p. 517.
[] None were admitted to the rank of burgesses in the town of Aragon who used any manual trade, with the exception of dealers in fine cloths. The woollen manufacture of Spain did not at any time become a considerable article of export, nor even supply the internal consumption, as Capmany has well shown. Memorias Historicas, t. iii. p. 325 et seqq., and Edinburgh Review, vol. x.
[x] Boucher, the French translator of Il Consolato del Mare, says that Edrissi, a Saracen geographer who lived about 1100, gives an account, though in a confused manner, of the polarity of the magnet. t. ii. p. 280. However, the lines of Guiot de Provins are decisive. These are quoted in Hist. Littéraire de la France, t. ix. p. 199; Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscript. t. xxi. p. 192; and several other works. Guinizzelli has the following passage, in a canzone quoted by Ginguené, Hist. Littéraire de l'Italie, t. i. p. 413:—
In quelle parti sotto tramontana,
Sono li monti della calamita,
Che dan virtute all'aere
Di trarre il ferro; ma perchè lontana,
Vole di simil pietra aver aita,
A far la adoperare,
E dirizzar lo ago in ver la stella.
We cannot be diverted, by the nonsensical theory these lines contain, from perceiving the positive testimony of the last verse to the poet's knowledge of the polarity of the magnet. But if any doubt could remain, Tiraboschi (t. iv. p. 171) has fully established, from a series of passages, that this phenomenon was well known in the thirteenth century; and puts an end altogether to the pretensions of Flavio Gioja, if such a person, ever existed. See also Macpherson's Annals, p. 364 and 418. It is provoking to find an historian like Robertson asserting, without hesitation, that this citizen of Amalfi was the inventor of the compass, and thus accrediting an error which had already been detected.
It is a singular circumstance, and only to be explained by the obstinacy with which men are apt to reject improvement, that the magnetic needle was not generally adopted in navigation till very long after the discovery of its properties, and even after their peculiar importance had been perceived. The writers of the thirteenth century, who mention the polarity of the needle, mention also its use in navigation; yet Capmany has found no distinct proof of its employment till 1403, and does not believe that it was frequently on board Mediterranean ships at the latter part of the preceding age. Memorias Historicas, t. iii. p. 70. Perhaps however he has inferred too much from his negative proof; and this subject seems open to further inquiry.