Page:Further India; (IA furtherindia00clif).pdf/118

ing service with the King of Spain was regarded by his countrymen as an act hardly to be distinguished from. treason. On the arrival of Magellan's fleet at Tidor the Spaniards felt that the real end of their journey had been attained, although they were still far from having com- pleted the circuit of the earth.

"The pilot who had remained with us," says Pigafetta, "told us that there were the Moluco Islands, for which we gave thanks to God, and to comfort ourselves we dis- charged all our artillery. It need not cause wonder that we were so much rejoiced, since we had passed twenty- seven months, less two days, always in search of Moluco. . . . But I must say that near all these islands the least depth that we found was 100 fathoms, for which reason attention is not to be given to all that the Portu- guese have spread, according to whom the islands of Moluco are situated in seas which cannot be navigated on account of the shoals, and the dark and foggy atmos- phere."

From which it will be gathered that a meticulous re- gard for truth did not fetter the Portuguese in their efforts to keep their rivals off what they regarded as their own preserves!

The Bull promulgated by Pope Alexander VI at the end of the fifteenth century, decreeing the discoveries of the West to Spain and those of the East to Portugal, was the reason which made it appear necessary to the King of Spain to discover a new sea-route to the Moluccas. The nations of Europe not only acquiesced in the Pope's arrangement to a surprising extent, but seem to have re-