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account of his adventures. Having been despatched from Delhi on a mission to China, he gives the following exaggerated account of the Chinese junks at Calicut : 'The sails of these vessels are made of cane reeds, woven together like a mat; which, when they put into port, they leave standing in the wind. In some of these vessels there will be a thousand men, six hundred of them sailors, and the remainder soldiers. Each of the larger vessels is followed by three others of inferior size. These vessels are nowhere built except in the farthest ports of China. They are rowed with large oars, which may be compared to great masts, over which five-and-twenty man were stationed, who work standing. The commander of each vessel is a great emir. In the large ships, too, they sow garden herbs and ginger, which they cultivate in cisterns ranged along the side. In these, also, are houses constructed of wood, in which the higher officers reside with their wives; every vessel is, therefore, like an independent city. Of such ships as these Chinese individuals will sometimes have large numbers, and, generally speaking, the Chinese are the richest people in the world.'

In addition to the pursuit after land lying at the extremity of Atlantic darkness, a still greater object of curiosity to the Saracens, or Arabs generally, was the seat of Gog and Magog, terms applied to a mighty race of cannibals, supposed to exist on the shores of the Euxine and Caspian Seas, though in the Guildhall of London they stand as mysterious giants, said to le twin-born. These notions are derived from the fancies of the Orientals, who supposed that Gog and Magog had an impregnable castle on the borders of Scythia. As the alchymist sought after the philosopher's stone and the youth restoring draught; as the astrologer

computed the fortunes of individuals and of states by the aspects of heavenly bodies; as the great mediaval voyagers searched for the fountain of youth in Florida, and as the mechanician passed a lifetime in the search for perpetual motion, so also Arabian navigators were anxious to explore the ideal abode of these monstrous productions of antiquity. But though nothing came of these quests after the unattainable, science was advanced in their vain pursuit, and so the search after Gog and Magog, which centuries ago was a part of the romance of navigation, was indirectly beneficial to nautical science and a knowledge of the world.

Among those who prosecuted this search after Gog and Magog were the governors of Baghdad. They hoped at first to find the residence of these giants on the shores of the Caspian Sea; but having conquered this country without discovering any trace or vestige of the castle of these fabulous beings, they turned to the more southern countries, which were also explored with the greatest care and attention, but without result. Upon this failure they were reduced to excessive perplexity, and, says Edrisi, another exploring party was despatched with strict orders to spare no pains to discover the castle of Gog and Magog. The mission proceeded along the shores of the Caspian, then over a vast desert, after which they met with a stupendous range of mountains, where, according to their report, they actually found the structure of which they were in search. One does not know whether to wonder most at the exuberant imagination displayed in their account of this wonderful castle, or the credulity of their countrymen, who swallowed these lying stories, which were probably invented to prevent any further attempt to penetrate so inhospitable a country. According to these

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veracious travellers, the castle had walls of iron, cemented with brass, and was of enormous magnitude. The gates were ninety feet high, and fastened with bolts and bars of a tremendous size, and everything appertaining to this wondrous structure was of similar proportions. The Arabian authorities were satisfied, and in all the maps of Asia, for ages after, the castle of Gog and Magog appeared at the northern boundary of that continent, on whose confines lie, in Dryden's words:

'Those cold regions which no summers cheer, Where brooding darkness covers half the year.'

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CHAPTER VI.

The Art of Navigation among the Britons-Improvement in Shipbuilding by Alfred and the Saxon Kings-King Alfred despatches the first English Ship to the Arctic Regions-The Discovery of the Faroe Islands and Iceland by the Norsemen-Discovery and Colonisation of Greenland in the Eleventh Century-Supposed Discovery of America-The Voyage of the Zeno Brothers-The State of Navigation in the Middle Ages-The Genoese and Venetians-The Rise of the Hanseatic League-The Merchant Ships of the Middle Ages-The Introduction of Aids to Navigation.

As the ancient Greeks owed their liberties and very existence as an independent state, to their naval superiority over the Persians, and as the Romans acquired the sovereignty of the ancient world almost as much by their fleets as their armies, so we Britons-who arrogate to ourselves the position formerly held by the latter mighty nation of antiquity, and to which, as regards our pre-eminence as the great colonisers of modern times, we are certainly entitled-owe our proud position as a great power alike in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, to our preponderance at sea. When, in 500 B.C., the Delphic Oracle was consulted, it advised the Athenians to defend themselves with wooden walls, which Themistocles, with characteristic acumen, interpreted to mean that they were to trust to their ships; so it is that as long as we command the sea, and continue to breed an unrivalled race of seamen, this England of ours can never be relegated to a secondary position in

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the councils of Europe, while it guarantees us facilities for the despatch of military expeditions to the ends of the earth such as no other power possesses.

Britain has assumed the proud pre-eminence in navigation once held by the great maritime nations of antiquity. First the Phoenicians brought the commerce of the East for the use of the Western world, and their ships found their way as far to the eastward as Sumatra, and to the westward as the shores of Cornwall. Their capital, Tyre, became for centuries the emporium for all nations, the mountains of Lebanon supplying the timber for building the ships, which were manned by the seamen of the Levant. Then the great Phoenician colony, Carthage, first rivalled and then excelled the opulence and greatness of the mother-country, and her merchant princes sent their fleet along the western coasts of Africa and Europe.

The Greeks excelled in the arts of seamanship and navigation as in all else, though superiority in war chiefly engrossed their attention, and they restricted themselves to the navigation of the seas adjacent to Greece. Their chief rivals for maritime supremacy were the Corinthians and Corcyræans. On the destruction of Tyre* by Alexander the Great, its pre-eminence in commerce was transferred to Alexandria, which became the emporium of trade. When Antony staked and lost an empire at Actium, Egypt became a Roman province, and, under the fostering care of Augustus, the commerce of Alexandria so greatly increased that it became the magazine of Rome, and its merchant princes were

*It may here be noted that in the first unsuccessful attempt to capture Tyre, made by Alexander, the Tyrians employed with great success a fireship. Curtius gives a description of this fireship, which is the first mentioned in history.

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