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Maritime discovery and Christian missions
Maritime discovery and Christian missions Author:John Campbell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 15 CHAPTER III. INVENTION OF THE COMPASS AND ITS EFFECTS ON MARITIME DISCOVERY. Importance of the Compass—Phoenician Mariners—Their Colonies and Commerc... more »e—Founding of Carthage—Their Knowledge of Astronomy—Greek Navigation—Roman Navigation—The Genevcsc and others all coasted— Wonderful Effects of the Compass—Claims to the Invention—Remarkable Passage of Vitry—Chinese Acquaintance with the Compass—Its state in Europe before Gioia—Result of Investigation—Wonders of the Principle— Discovery of the Magnet—Variation of the Compass. We now proceed to investigate the most important subject, in connexion with maritime discovery, that ever occupied the minds of men. That subject is the invention, properties, and use of the mariner's compass. The value of this wonderful instrument may best be perceived, by contrasting the state of navigation before and since its employment. From the flood till the founding of the tower of Babel, and the confusion of tongues, there was no navigation. Passing over the fictions of poetry, we are at once conducted both by sacred and profane history to the Phoenicians, as the earliest and ablest mariners of the ancient world. They made greater discoveries than all their contemporary nations; they planted colonies in most of the countries so discovered; and they established trade and commerce in the most distant regions. The facts of their naval power, and of the wealth and greatness resulting from it, are fully established by the Prophet Ezekiel. According to him, Tyre appears to have been the England of ancient times. No description more" expressive of the most extended commerce, of boundless wealth, and matchless splendour, was ever drawn by the hand of man. Sec Ezek. xxyii. All history is full of the same subject. One of the first expeditions...« less