Note 197 — Chapter XII · THE STONE OF HERCULES.
Reading edition
The supposed anterior discovery of the Canaries by a Norman rover would be no argument, for these islands may be reached without encountering the principal difficulties of the enterprise. And further at the time of the alleged discovery, the compass may have been in use in the north of Europe. The coins of the Baltic show the intimacy there of the Saracens from the first century of the Hejira, and African settlers in England are entered in Doomsday Book. The use of it in the north, long before its employment by the Portuguese, has been asserted by various writers, not only as derived from the Arabs, but also as original, or derived from the Chinese.
“Il’ est certain que les marins des côtes de Normandie et de Bretagne employaient dès le xiii siècle l’aiguille aimanée sous le nom de marinette.”—Esmenard.
“Raymondus Lullus in 1272 describes a compass used by the Basques and Catalonians.”—Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 474.
“The Fins have a compass which possesses the peculiarity of indicating the rising and setting of the sun—which must be in the figures round it, as in the Chinese compass—in summer and winter, in a manner that can only agree with the latitude 49° 20´.”—Salverte, Occult Sciences, tom. ii. p. 252.