The lawyers could not agree as to priority of possession,[1] while the scientific experts could not agree upon the longitude of the Moluccas within 46 degrees, one-eighth of the earth's surface. The Spanish judges reported the Moluccas inside their line by thirty degrees.[2] Apart from the insuperable difficulties of calculating the longitude exactly, no agreement could be reached as to the starting point. The Spaniards asserted that the measurement ought to begin at San Antonio, the most westerly of the Cape Verd Islands, for, as the line had been moved at the king of Portugal's request and not so far west by thirty degrees as he had desired, it was only reasonable to take the westernmost island. The Portuguese quibbled; as the treaty said "islands" and that the expedition to fix the line should sail from the Canaries to the Cape Verd Islands, the only starting point that fulfilled the conditions was the meridian passing through the two islands Sal and Buena Vista, which were first encountered in coming from the Canaries, in other words the most easterly of the group. In fact the Portuguese were in a strait; if the line were pushed westward they might lose the Moluccas, if eastward they might lose Brazil.[3] Their policy was obstruction and delay, so they rejected all Spanish maps and proposed four astronomical methods of determining the longitude. This would take time.
May 31, Ferdinand Columbus read the decision of the Spanish judges, that the line be drawn three hundred and seventy leagues west of San Antonio and be represented on all maps made thereafter.[4] As the Spaniards calculated the longitude they thus secured not only the Moluccas but also
- ↑ As the Pope's Bull provided for lands "to be found" as well as for those already discovered ("inventas et inveniendas, detectas, et detegendas"), it sanctioned the establishment of a right of possession by discovery.
- ↑ Navarrete, iv, 367.
- ↑ Gomara says the Portuguese realized the mistake of the removal of the line westward by the treaty of Tordesillas. I, leaf 139, seq. Arber, I, 274.
- ↑ The line, according to this decision, is traced on the map of 1527 once attributed to Ferd. Columbus, and also on the map of 1529. See Kohl's Die Beiden Aeltesten General-Karten von Amerika. In Guillemard's Magellan there is a reduction of the map of 1529.
