Line of no variation.
To make a physical limit serve a political one was an obvious recourse at a time when the line of no variation was thought to be unique and of a true north and south direction; but within a century the observers found three other lines, as Acosta tells us in his Historia Natural de las Indias, in 1589; and there proved to be a persistent migration of these lines, all little suited to terrestrial demarcations. Roselly de Lorgues and the canonizers, however, having given to Columbus the planning of the line in his cell at Rabida, think, with a surprising prescience on his part, and with a very convenient obliviousness on their part, that he had chosen "precisely the only point of our planet which science would choose in our day,—a mysterious demarcation made by its omnipotent Creator," in sovereign disregard, unfortunately, of the laws of his own universe!
Suspicious movements in Portugal.
Meanwhile there were movements in Portugal which Ferdinand had not failed to notice. An ambassador had come from its king, asking permission to buy certain articles of prohibited exportation for use on an African expedition which the Portuguese were fitting out. Ferdinand suspected that the true purpose of this armament was to seize the new islands, under a pretense as dishonorable as that which covered the ostensible voyage to the Cape de Verde Islands, by whose exposure Columbus had been driven into Spain. The Spanish monarch was alert enough to get quite beforehand with his royal brother. Before the ambassador of which mention has been made had come to the Spanish Court, Ferdinand had dispatched Lope de Herrera to Lisbon, armed with a conciliatory and a denunciatory letter, to use one or the other, as he might find the conditions demanded. The Portuguese historian Resende tells us that João, in order to give a wrong scent, had openly bestowed largesses on some and had secretly suborned other members of Ferdinand's cabinet, so that he did not lack for knowledge of the Spanish intentions from the latter members. He and his ambassadors were accordingly found by Ferdinand to be inexplicably prepared at every new turn of the negotiations.
In this way João had been informed of the double mission of Herrera, and could avoid the issue with him, while he sent his own ambassadors to Spain, to promise that, pending their negotiations, no vessel should sail on any voyage of discovery for sixty days. They were also to propose that instead of the papal line, one should be drawn due west from the Canaries, giving all new discoveries north to the Spaniards, and all south to the Portuguese. This new move Ferdinand turned to his own advantage, for it gave him the opportunity to enter upon a course of diplomacy which he could extend long enough to allow Columbus to get off with a new armament. He then sent a fresh embassy, with instructions to move slowly and protract the discussion, but to resort, when compelled, to a proposition for arbitration. João was foiled and he knew it. "These ambassadors," he said, "have no feet to hurry and no head to propound." The Spanish game was the best played, and the Portuguese king grew fretful under it, and intimated sometimes a purpose to proceed to violence, but he was restrained by a better wisdom. We depend mainly upon the Portuguese historians for understanding these complications, and it is to be hoped that some time the archives of the Vatican may reveal the substance of these tripartite negotiations of the papal court and the two crowns.
1493. May. Honors of Columbus confirmed.
May 28. Columbus leaves Barcelona.
June. In Seville.