Essays on the motives (adventure, commerce, religion, science) and periods of exploration. Notes the 7th century Hegira of the Arabs, and the accounts of Soleyman (as far as China)and Masoudi (geographer, China and Africa). "From their contact with the Chinese, the Arabs learned the use of the compass, and from them it passed to the sailors of the Mediterranean, thus bringing to European navigators one of the means which enabled them to prosecute those long sea voyages, resulting among other things in the discovery of the New World." [399]