broke in upon his limits, but the Pope replied that he had drawn a boundary line.[1] After the Bull of September 25 he was even more displeased. Rumors came to Spain that he had despatched an expedition to the New World.[2] Envoys were sent back and forth and it was learned that he objected to the Spaniards sailing south of the Canaries and proposed an east and west demarcation line on that parallel.[3]
King John would not submit the matter to arbitration, and brought heavy pressure to bear upon the Pope to make a change, but in vain; apparently the trouble would have ended in war, just what the establishment of the boundary was designed to avoid, had not the flourishing condition of Spain restrained him. He particularly protested against being confined to so narrow a space in the great ocean as would be bounded by a line only 100 leagues west of his own islands.[4]
This was a real grievance. Experience had shown the Portuguese pilots that a direct southerly course down the African coast was subject to delays by calms, adverse currents, and unfavorable winds. Vasco de Gama recommended that Cabral on his voyage to India in 1500 should sail south-west until he reached the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope, when he should sail due east, availing himself of the trade winds. This course would be safer and quicker.[5] The
- ↑ Herrera, Dec. I, Lib. II.
- ↑ Navarrete, II, 109.
- ↑ Herrera, Dec. I, Lib. II. ch. viii.
- ↑ Muñoz, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, Lib. IV, cap. xxviii.
- ↑ These instructions entitled "Esta hé a maneira que parece à Vasco de Gama que deve teer Pedro Alvarez em sua yda, prazendo Nosso Senhor," were first published by Varnhagen from the Portuguese Archives. The following essential passage is given on p. 422 of the first volume of his Historia Geral do Brazil: "E se ouverem de gynar, seja sobre a banda do sudueste, e tanto que neles deer o vento escasso devem hyr na volta do mar até meterem o Cabo de Boôa Esperança em leste franco, e dy em diante navegarem segundo lhe servyr o tempo, e mais ganharem, porque corao forem nadyta parajem nam lhe myngoará tempo, com ajuda de nosso senhor, com que cobrem o dito Cabo," quoted from D'Avezac, Considérations Géographiques sur l'Histoire du Brésil, Note D, Bulletin de la Soc. de Géog., Août et Septembre, 1857, 246. As no such document can now be found in the Portuguese Archives, Harrisse boldly declares these instructions spurious. Discovery of North America, 683, n. In Alguns Documentos, however, there are fragments of a series of very detailed instructions to Cabral in regard to the management of the business of the expedition when he should reach India. See pp. 97 ff. If portions of this body of instructions have become lost the absence of the original manuscript of the instructions printed by Varnhagen from the Archives is not conclusive against their authenticity. They may well have formed the first part of the extant instructions the beginning of which is missing.
The discovery of America was destined to follow as a consequence of the Portuguese voyages, even if Columbus had never lived. The authenticity of these instructions might be given up without weakening that conclusion. Whether Cabral discovered Brazil in consequence of these instructions or by accident does not matter. A glance at a map of ocean currents will show that either such instructions or such an accident would be inevitable if voyaging down the coast of Africa were kept up. The true glory of Columbus lies in his persistence and resolution in acting upon his intellectual convictions. It is true he was misled by miscalculations of the size of the earth. Every one else, however, had the same supposed facts, but Columbus was ready to act on them, and had they been true, how much simpler to sail due west 3,000 miles than around Africa 12,000 to 15,000 miles?
