[Footnote 3:  The tract alluded to is usually known as tne treatise de Moribus Brachmanorum, and ascribed to St. Ambrose.  For an account of it see Vol.  I. Pt. v. ch. i. p. 538.]

The learned commentator, LANE, says that several Arab writers describe this mountain of loadstone, and amongst others he instances El Caswini, who lived in the latter half of the thirteenth century.[1] EDRISI, the Arab geographer, likewise alludes to it; but the invention belongs to an earlier age, and Palladius, in describing Ceylon, says that the magnetic rock is in the adjacent islands called Maniolae (Maldives?), and that ships coming within the sphere of its influence are irresistibly drawn towards it, and lose all power of progress except in its direction.  Hence it is essential, he adds, that vessels sailing for Ceylon should be fastened with wooden instead of iron bolts.[2]

[Footnote 1:  LANE’S Arabian Nights, vol. i. ch. iii, p. 72, p. 242.]

[Footnote 2:  [Greek:  “Esti de idikos ta diaperonta ploia eis ekeinen ten megalen neson aneu siderou epiouriois xylinois kataskeuasmena"]—­PALLADIUS, in Pseudo-Callisthenes, lib. iii. c. vii.  But the fable of the loadstone mountain is older than either the Arabian sailors or the Greeks of the lower empire.  Aristotle speaks of a magnetic mountain on the coast of India, and Pliny repeats the story, adding that “si sint clavi in calciamentis, vestigia avelli in altero non posse in altero sisti.”—­Lib. ii. c. 98, lib. xxxvi. c. 25.  Ptolemy recounts a similar fable in his geography.  Klaproth, in his Lettre sur la Boussole, says that this romantic belief was first communicated to the West from China.  “Les anciens auteurs Chinois parlent aussi de montagnes magnetiques de la mer meridionale sur les cotes de Tonquin et de la Cochin Chine; et disent que si les vaisseaux etrangers qui sont garnis de plaques de fer s’en approchent ils y sont arretes et aucun d’eux ne peut passer par ces endroits.”—­KLAPROTH, Lett. v. p. 117, quoted by SANTAREM, Essai sur l’Histo. de Cosmogr., vol. i. p. 182.]

Another peculiarity of the native craft on the west coast of Ceylon is their construction with a prow at each extremity, a characteristic which belongs also to the Massoula boats of Madras, as well as to others on the south of India.  It is a curious illustration of the abiding nature of local usages when originating in necessities and utility, that STRABO, in describing the boats in which the traffic was carried on between Taprobane and the continent, says they were “built with prows at each end, but without holds or keels."[1]

[Footnote 1:  [Greek:  “Kateskeuasmenas de amphoterothen enkoilion metron choris."]—­Lib xv. c. i. s. 14.  Pliny, who makes the same statement, says the Singhalese adopted this model to avoid the necessity of tacking in the narrow and shallow channels, between Ceylon and the mainland of India (lib. vi. c. 24).]