SOO ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



all iliat time disputing about anotlier line — one of their own making. 

 Last of all when, in 1885, the present Pope arbitrated upon the dispute 

 concerning the Caroline islands, situated ne^ar the western edge of the 

 grant supposed to have been made by his predecessors, he made not 

 the least reference to that, but decided consistently with his prede^ 

 cessors according to the underlying princi])le of law. 



Yll. — The Point of Departure. 



The commissioners at Tordesillas made no improvement on the .Bull 

 of Pope Alexander in point of clearness ; for their distance of three 

 hundred and seventy leagues was made to commence from the Cape 

 Verde Islands generally, and that group extends over three degrees of 

 longitude. These islands are distant about 320 miles from Cape Verde 

 in Africa. They are barren and when discovered by the Portuguese 

 in A.D. 1456, were uninhabited. They were of considerable import- 

 ance while the Portuguese were extending their discoveries southwards 

 along the coast of Africa ïind, in the old narratives of voyages, they are 

 often mentioned. 



At first, while the islands of the West Indies were supposed to be 

 outlying portions of the East Indian archipelago, and still more, after 

 A.D. 1500, when Cabrai discovered Brazil, the Portuguese claimed the 

 most western isl!and of the group, San Antonio^ as the initial point for 

 the western measurement. In that way the western limit of their de- 

 marcation area was made to include a greater stretch of the continent 

 now known as South America. The Spaniards were not so certain 

 about it, however, and in A.D. 1495, the Spanish sovereigns consulted 

 Don Jaime Ferrer on the meaning of the treaty and he gave his opinion 

 that Fogo, the central island, should be the point of depiarture. His 

 opinion is still extant in full, and may be found in Navarrete, Vol. II. 

 A translation is appended (Appendix D) and is worth careful penisal. 

 The question sulmiittod was chiefly in regard to some practical method 

 of measuring the 370 leagues upon the Atlantic ocean ; but incidentally, 

 it becomes clear that Ferrer, in 1495, had no idea that the Pope, oir 

 anybody else, had made a partition of the world ; for he s&ys that the 

 eastern lands "on the Arabian Gulf side will belong to the sovereigns, 

 '' our masters, should their vessels first navigate there." This single 

 sentence demonstrates beyond cavil that Pope Alexander had not 

 attempted to divide the world ; and that the doctrine of right by dis- 

 covery was the prevailing doctrine of international law then, as now. 

 It also indicates that the development of the idea of a partition line in 

 the far Fast had not, up to 1495, set in. 



