1518.] THE SPANIARDS AND PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 49 



the passage through it was attended with great difficulties and 

 dangers ; besides which, it was itself almost as far from Europe as 

 India by the eastern route. Other and more direct channels of 

 communication between the Atlantic and the Southern Ocean might, 

 indeed, be discovered : but the latter sea was found to be infinitely 

 wider than had been supposed ; and, although the part of it crossed 

 by Magellan was so little disturbed by storms that he was induced 

 to name it the Pacific Ocean, yet he also observed that the winds 

 blew over it invariably from eastern points. These circumstances 

 depressed the hopes of the Spaniards with respect to the establish- 

 ment of their power in Southern Asia, though they continued their 

 expeditions to that part of the world by way of Magellan's Strait, 

 and their search for new passages into the Pacific. Their expedi- 

 tions to India brought them into collision with the Portuguese,* 

 who had already made several settlements in the Molucca Islands, 

 and had obtained from the Chinese, in 1518, the possession, under 

 certain qualifications, of the important port of Macao, near Canton ; 

 and many bloody conflicts took place, in consequence, between the 

 subjects of those nations, in that distant quarter of the world, as 

 well as many angry disputes between their governments, before the 

 questions of right at issue could be settled. 



In the mean time, other events occurred, which consoled the 

 Spaniards for their disappointments with regard to India, and 

 caused them to direct their attention more particularly to the 

 New World. 



Before the period of the departure of Magellan on his expedi- 

 tion, the Spaniards had, in fact, derived from their discoveries 

 beyond the Atlantic but few of the advantages which they anti- 

 cipated. They had found and taken possession of countries 



* Spain claimed the exclusive navigation, trade, and conquest, westward, to the 

 extremity of the peninsula of Malacca, so as to include all the Molucca Islands and 

 China; while the Portuguese insisted on exercising the same privileges, without 

 competition, eastward as far as the Ladrone Islands ; each on the ground that the 

 meridian of partition, settled with regard to the Atlantic, in 1494, would, if continued 

 on the other side of the globe, pass in such a manner as to place the portions claimed 

 by itself within its own hemisphere. The question was discussed between the two 

 courts directly, and by their commissioners who met at Badajos in 1523, but without 

 arriving at any definite arrangement. At length, on the 22d of April, 1529, a treaty 

 was concluded at Saragossa, by the terms of which the king of Spain sold all his rights 

 to the Moluccas to the king of Portugal for 350,000 ducats of gold, ($3,080,000.) 

 with the proviso that the latter might, by repaying the sum, be at liberty again to 

 urge those rights. The sum was never repaid, and Spain did not again claim the 

 islands ; though, for a long period afterwards, the Spanish empire was represented 

 on Spanish maps as extending westward to the extremity of Malacca. 



7 



