Meanwhile the Spaniards, after the discovery of America by Columbus, were
pursuing their navigations and explorations westward with the same object
in view, and it soon dawned upon them that a vast ocean separated them
from the islands discovered by the Portuguese.

Magellan was then sent out in search of a westerly passage; he reached
the regions where the Portuguese had established themselves, and disputes
arose as to the limits of the Portuguese and Spanish boundaries.

Pope Alexander VI. had generously bestowed one-half of the undiscovered
world upon the Spanish, and the other half upon the Portuguese, charging
each nation with the conversion of the heathen within its prospective
domains.

Merely as a fact this is interesting enough, but viewed in the light of
subsequent events it assumes a specific importance.

The actual size of the earth was not known at the time, and this division
of Pope Alexander's, measured from the other side of the world, resulted
in an overlapping and duplicate charting of the Portuguese and Spanish
boundaries in the longitudes of the Spice Islands,* an overlapping due,
no doubt, principally to the desire of each contending party to include
the Spice Islands within its own hemisphere, but also to the fact that
the point of departure which had been fixed in the vicinity of the
Azores, was subsequently removed westward as far as the mouth of the
Amazons.

If Portugal and Spain had remained to the present day in possession of
their respective hemispheres, the first arrangement would have given