PORTUGUESE VOYAGES. 205 



which, it was supposed three hundred years ago, all the 

 compass needles turned themselves. 1 



The discovery of the line of no variation by Columbus 

 (which was substantially a part of his discovery of the var- 

 iation itself) became at once of great political moment 

 Immediately upon his return to Spain, in March, 1493, the 

 King and Queen despatched an embassy to Pope Alexander 

 VI., with a prayer for the securing to them of their rights in 

 the newly-discovered lands. Martin V. had already given to 

 Portugal all the territory which her mariners might dis- 

 cover between Cape Bojador and the Bast Indies. Alex- 

 ander now made over to Spain all lands west and south of 

 a line drawn from the Arctic to the Antartic Pole, one 

 hundred leagues west of the Azores ; or in other words, all 

 of the world yet to be discovered was partitioned between 

 these two nations with the line of no variation to separate 

 their respective possessions. 



The Portuguese lost little time in cultivating their hem- 

 isphere. The great dream of Henry the Navigator re- 

 mained still unrealized, although the three years' voyage 

 of the sailors of the Egyptian Pharaoh, centuries before, 

 showed that the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope was 

 not impossible. Bartholomew Diaz had confirmed this in 

 1486, by reaching the cape with a couple of fifty-ton pin- 

 naces. The India, which Columbus had not found by 

 sailing westward might still be open to discovery through 

 an eastward voyage. The Jewish physicians said so. 

 John of Portugal, who had seen the prize of the New 

 World slip through his grasp, burned to retrieve his error. 

 Again the compass led on a great adventure, and in 1498 

 the ships of Vasco da Gama, having sailed around the 

 African continent, came to anchor on the Malabar coast. 



The maritime supremacy of the Italians was now van- 

 ishing, and the rivalry lay between the nations of the 

 Iberian peninsula. It was not long before it dawned on 

 them that the earth, being globular, an imaginary line on 



1 Humboldt, cit. sup. 



