INTERNATIONAL DISCOVERIES 7 



easternmost countries washed by the Indian Ocean, and 

 assoilzied those who perished in the conquest.^ In 1492 

 Columbus sailed under the banner of Castille and Aragon 

 due west, as Toscanelli had advised ; found, as he fancied, 

 the east coast of Cathay, wherein were gold, silver, and jewels, 

 outshining the splendours of the New Jerusalem ; reached, as 

 he declared, the Kingdom of the Great Khan and the site 

 of Sir John Mandeville's Terrestrial Paradise, and meditated 

 the conquest of the old Jerusalem from the east. Such were 

 his gorgeous fancies, but he had only found Cuba, which he 

 mistook for Asia, Hayti, which he mistook for Japan, and 

 some other savage islands. The new printing-presses at 

 Madrid, Rome, Basle, and Paris blazoned his fame far and 

 wide. Pope Alexander VI issued four Bulls, which — after atid to 

 reciting the grants to Portugal, the expulsion of the Moors ^^l^^^^ ^?* 

 from Granada, and the exploits of Columbus, as though they 1494 by 

 were incidents of a Crusade — drew a line of longitude one ^^^-^"^ ^^^ 

 hundred leagues west of the Azores or Cape Verde Islands, not dearly 

 and conferred on Ferdinand and Isabella all lands discovered Jv-J^M^ax/ 

 or to be discovered west of that line of longitude, south of America, 

 the latitude of those islands, and east of India.^ The same 

 Bulls excommunicated discoverers, fishers, traders, and 

 travellers within the new Spanish zone, unless they were 

 licensed by the royal monopolists. The very seas were 

 tabooed to tourists. After the four Bulls came a treaty and by the 

 between Portugal and Spain, known as the Treaty of yT^^^ ^-^ 

 Tordesillas (1494), which readjusted their boundaries in the sillas, 

 unknown world. The line of longitude was shifted by the '^^i'^^^^f 

 treaty to a position 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde third 

 Islands ; the partitioned world was not limited by any line P^^^^^^- 

 of latitude ; the partitioned sea was free — except to discoverers, 

 conquerors, and traders — and Spanish fleets might cross the 



1 Purchas, Filgri^ns, ed. 1905, vol. ii, p. 14. 



* Reale Commissione Colonibiana : Raccolta di Documenti e Siudi, 

 Pt. Ill, vol. i, Rome, 1893 ; Purchas, Pilgrims, vol. ii, p. 34. The 

 line of latitude is ambiguously expressed. 



