56
“Thing-a-ma-jigger” and “What-cher-may-call-it”
or a Magic Needle and a
Magic Powder
About this same time that Marco Polo returned from his travels, people in Europe began to hear and talk about a magic needle and a magic powder that did remarkable things, and some say that Marco brought them back from Cathay, but this we doubt. The little magic needle when floated on a straw or held up only at its middle would always turn towards the north no matter how much you twisted it. Such a needle put in a case was called a compass.
Now, you may not see why such a little thing was so remarkable. But strange as it may seem, this little thing really made it possible to discover a new world.
Perhaps you have played the game in which a child is blindfolded, twisted around several times in the center of the room, and then told to go toward the door or the window or some other point in the room. You know how impossible it is for one who has been so turned round to tell which way to go, and you know how absurd one looks who goes in quite the opposite direction when he thinks he is going straight.
Well, the sailor at sea was something like such a blindfolded child. Of course, if the weather were fine he could tell by the sun or the stars which way he should go. But when the weather was cloudy and bad there was nothing for him to go by. He was then like the blindfolded child. He might easily become confused and sail in just the opposite direction from the way he wanted to go without knowing the difference.
This was perhaps one of the chief reasons why sailors, before the compass was used, had not gone far out of sight of land. They were afraid they might not be able to find their way back. So only that part of the world was known which could be reached by land or without going far out of sight of land.
But, with the compass, sailors could sail on and on through storm and cloudy weather and keep always in the direction they wanted to go. They simply had to follow the little magnetic needle suspended in its box. No matter how much the boat turned or twisted or tossed, the little needle always pointed to the north. Of course sailors did not always want to go north, but it was very easy to tell any other direction if they knew which was north. South was exactly opposite, east was to the right, and west was to the left. So all they had to do was to steer the boat on the course in whatever direction they wished.
It was a long while, however, before sailors would use a compass. They thought it was bewitched by some magic, and they were afraid to have anything to do with such a thing. Sailors are likely to be superstitious, and they were afraid that if they took the compass on board it might bewitch their ship and bring them bad luck.
The other magic thing was gunpowder.