From the islands, which Magalhaens called “Isole de Ladroni,”[356] the three ships stood toward the Philippine Islands, where, on one called Matan, the captain-general was killed in an engagement with the natives, on the twenty-seventh of April, 1521. It was at the island of Zubu, near the former, “in ten degrees north latitude,” that Magalhaens, before his death, received the first intelligence respecting the Molucca Islands. On Wednesday, the sixth of November, 1521, the ships came in sight of the long-sought Spice Islands, and on Friday, the eighth of November, 1521, the Victoria and the Trinidad arrived at the island of Tadore. “We now,” Pigafetta remarks, “returned thanks to God and manifested our joy by firing a round from all of our large guns. It will not excite astonishment that we should be elated, when it is considered that we had been at sea twenty-seven months, wanting two days, and had visited numerous islands in search of those we had reached.
“The Portuguese had reported that the Molucca Islands lay in the middle of an impassable sea, full of shallows, and were surrounded by a cloudy, foggy atmosphere. We, however, found the contrary, and never had less than a hundred fathoms water all the way to the Molucca Islands.” The latter were five in number: Tarenate, Tadore, Mutir, Machian and Bachian.[357] When afterward cloves were found on the adjacent islands, the name Moluccas, was applied to all the islands lying between the Philippines and Java.
After a short sojourn at the Spice Islands, the return voyage was made by the ship La Victoria alone, commanded by Juan Sebastian del Cano,[358] who set sail from Tadore on the twenty-first of December, 1521, the ship La Concepcion having been burned at the island Bohol, and La Trinidad having been left at the Moluccas in a leaking condition. Following the route along the coast of Africa, the ship La Victoria arrived at Seville, on Monday, the eighth of September, 1522, she having sailed in the entire voyage, according to Pigafetta’s computation, fourteen thousand six hundred leagues. Thus passed into history the wonderful achievement of the first circumnavigation of the earth in three years and twenty-nine days.[359]
The signal success of the maritime enterprise of the Spaniards engendered a spirit of jealousy among the Portuguese. The feeling of being overshadowed by their persistent rival in reaching the Indies by the way of the West led them to accuse the Spaniards of encroaching on their commercial route to the Spice Islands, and of breaking the treaty of Tordesillas. The Spaniards in defence claimed that the Moluccas or the Spice Islands, found by Magellan’s companions, were not within the limits of the territory of the Portuguese as defined by the papal bull.
To settle these national differences the notable congress of Badajos was convened in the spring of 1524. The king of each country sent to it special commissioners, among which number were Fernando Columbus, Sebastian Cabot, Diego Ribero, and Estevan Gomez. For a number of days the two parties angrily disputed concerning the indefinite position of the line of demarkation as established by the treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. It was a question not easily decided where among the Cape Verd Islands the point was, through which, at the distance of three hundred and seventy leagues from it, the line of limitation passed to the poles, for the group of the Cape Verd Islands occupies a space in extent from east to west of about one hundred and fifty miles.
Wherever, east or west, they decided this point should be established each party was aware that so much space would be gained or lost on the opposite side of the earth by the one or the other of the two countries. The congress, after many exciting disputations, finally ended its session on the last day of May, without reaching any decision respecting the position of the papal line of limitation. The admission that Spain had full title to the Spice or Molucca Islands and that Portugal had acquired the right of possession of a part of Brazil, were the chief concessions made by this contentious body of learned men.[360]
CHAPTER IX.
1504-1524.
The competitive zeal which Portugal, Spain, and England had displayed, in searching for a short water-way to the eastern coast of Asia, in time quickened the ambition of France to emulate these maritime powers in discovering a desirable route across the Atlantic to the vast domains of the Grand Khan of Cathay. The Gulf of St. Lawrence, as early as the year 1504, was frequented by the fishing vessels of France. The exploration of the coast of the New Land, north of the present Atlantic territory of the United States of America, is described by a famous French sea-captain of Dieppe, in 1539.