age and devotion of the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator,
who gave his life to the advancement of geographical discovery and
of Portuguese commerce. The exploration of the west coast of Africa
was the school of the navigators who sailed to the East and the West
Indies, and out of the administration of the trade with Africa grew
the colonial systems of later days.

In the last quarter of the fifteenth century the increasing
obstructions in Egypt and by the Turks to the trade with the East
Indies held out a great prize to the discoverer of an all-sea route
to the Spice Islands. Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco da Gama solved this
problem for Portugal, but the solution offered to Spain by Columbus
and accepted in 1492 revealed a New World, the Indies of the West.

The King of Portugal, zealous to retain his monopoly of African and
eastern exploration, and the pious sovereigns of Spain, desirous to
build their colonial empire on solid and unquestioned foundations,
alike appealed to the Pope for a definition of their rights and a
confirmation of their claims. The world seemed big enough and with a
spacious liberality Pope Alexander VI granted Ferdinand and Isabella
the right to explore and to take possession of all the hitherto
unknown and heathen parts of the world west of a certain line drawn
north and south in the Atlantic Ocean. East of that line the rights
of Portugal, resting on their explorations and the grants of earlier
popes, were confirmed.

The documentary history of the Philippines begins with the Demarcation
Bulls and the treaty of Tordesillas, for out of them grew Magellan's
voyage and the discovery of the islands; and without them the
Philippines would no doubt have been occupied by Portugal and later
have fallen a prey to the Dutch as did the Moluccas.

King John of Portugal was dissatisfied with the provisions of the
Demarcation Bulls. He held that the treaty between Spain and Portugal
in 1479 had resigned to Portugal the field of oceanic discovery,
Spain retaining only the Canaries; and he felt that a boundary line
only a hundred leagues west of the Azores not only was an infringement
on his rights but would be a practical embarrassment in that it would
not allow his sailors adequate sea room for their African voyages.

His first contention was hardly valid; the second, however,
was reasonable and, as Columbus had estimated the distance from
the Canaries to the new islands at over nine hundred leagues,