of South
America from the Orinoco River to the island of Margarita. After a
fourth and last voyage in 1502-04, Columbus died at Valladolid in 1506,
in the firm belief that he had discovered a part of the Continent of
Asia.

The entire circle of the Antilles having thus been revealed before the
end of the fifteenth century, the Spaniards pushed forward to the
continent. While Hojida, Vespucci, Pinzon and de Solis were exploring
the eastern coast from La Plata to Yucatan, Ponce de Leon in 1512
discovered Florida, and in 1513 Vasco Nunez de Balboa descried the
Pacific Ocean from the heights of Darien, revealing for the first time
the existence of a new continent. In 1520 Magellan entered the Pacific
through the strait which bears his name, and a year later was killed in
one of the Philippine Islands. Within the next twenty years Cortez had
conquered the realm of Montezuma, and Pizarro the empire of Peru; and
thus within the space of two generations all of the West Indies, North
America to California and the Carolinas, all of South America except
Brazil, which the error of Cabral gave to the Portuguese, and in the
east the Philippine Islands and New Guinea passed under the sway of the
Crown of Castile.

Ferdinand and Isabella in 1493 had consulted with several persons of
eminent learning to find out whether it was necessary to obtain the
investiture of the Pope for their newly-discovered possessions, and all
were of opinion that this formality was unnecessary.[1] Nevertheless, on
3rd May 1493, a bull was granted by Pope Alexander VI., which divided
the sovereignty of those parts of the world not possessed by any
Christian prince between Spain and Portugal by a meridian line 100
leagues west of the Azores or of Cape Verde. Later Spanish writers made
much of this papal gift; yet, as Georges Scelle points out,[2] it is
possible that this bull was not so much a deed of conveyance, investing
the Spaniards with the proprietorship of America, as it was an act of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction according them, on the strength of their
acquired right and proven Catholicism, a monopoly as it were in the
propagation of the faith. At that time, even Catholic princes were no
longer accustomed to seek the Pope's sanction when making a new
conquest, and certainly in the domain of public law the Pope was not
considered to have temporal jurisdiction over the entire world. He did,
however, intervene in temporal matters when they directly infl