Surface verticity is the tendency to point north found in ordinary "loadstones" and magnetised iron.
These bits of matter became the variety of weak magnets found nearer the Earth's surface.
The Atlantic Ocean rolled westward and ricocheted off the eastern coast of the New World, creating the tides.
The planets, stars, sun and moon too migrated westward.
The stirrings of magnets could not be blamed on a special force, but only on the impulse of nearly all things to go west.