position, had refused to entertain Magellan's desire for employment at sea, or his projects of discovery, from which no immediate profit was to be expected. This is apparent from the statement of Barros, Decad. iii, lib. v, cap. viii, that letters of Magellan to Francisco Serrano were found after the death of the latter in Maluco, in which Magellan said that he should soon see him; and, if it were not by way of Portugal, it would be by way of Castile, and that Serrano should therefore wait for him there. Further on, Barros says that recourse to Castile appears from these letters to have been in Magellan's mind some time before the occurrence of the king's dismissal of his business: and that this was shown by his always associating with pilots, and occupying himself with sea-charts.
The Portuguese exaggerated very much the injury they expected to result, and, later, which they thought had resulted from Magellan's voyage, which could not change the position of the Moluccas, nor consequently the Portuguese title to them; but the apprehensions which they felt, arose from their fear of others sharing in the spice trade, and from the limited geographical knowledge of the period, which left both parties very much in doubt as to the true position of those islands, or as to the extent of the circumference of the globe. The question of the exact position of the Moluccas was not definitely ascertained till much later, though a compromise was arrived at in 1529 by the treaty between Spain and Portugal, by which Charles V gave up whatever rights to the Moluccas he imagined he possessed, to Portugal, for a sum of three hundred and
