islands of the Atlantic save the Canaries. Columbus records that King John n affirmed in conversation ;with him the right of Portugal under this compact to the new Atlantic regions. Meanwhile Columbus and his storm-tossed crew, having landed on their return voyage at St. Mary's Isle, February 18, 1493, were seized as prisoners by the Portuguese governor. Even after their release, and their reception in Portugal with outward marks of hon- our, it was proposed to * make away with Columbus another base counsel of courtiers which King John had this time the magnanimity to reject. Spain proved equally prompt. By the middle of April, 1493, Colum- bus was in the presence of Ferdinand and Isabella at Barcelona; and on May 3d, Pope Alexander VI, himself a Spaniard, granted three Privileges securing to their Catholic Majesties the exclusive right to the newly discovered lands. This feat of diplomatic activity, hardly to be sur- passed in our own time of telegraphs, was at once detected to have trenched on previous Papal grants to Portugal; and next day, May 4th, a Bull was issued to reconcile the conflicting titles. Spain was to have all lands discovered or to be discovered, and not occupied by any Christian prince at Christmas, 1492, to the west and south of an imaginary line one hundred leagues west and south of the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands, which the Bull vaguely takes as one group. No other nation was to sail thither for trade or any other purpose without permission of the Spanish crown.
