Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/151

 ardent desire to deprive the Catholic Church of the inestimable treasure of an infinite number of souls; and to found in that land an empire, in which they will at length possess much better and richer Indies than our own, and from which position they will be able to lord it absolutely over all our territories, and over all our navigation and commerce with the West Indies. This is a most grievous case for us, and most offensive to our Lord God and His Church, and this kingdom has reason to dread from so mischievous a state of things very great injuries from the hands of these enemies, and no less punishment from the divine indignation for having allowed these basilisks to locate themselves in such a position; from whence, before we of the Catholic Church arrive with the preaching of the gospel with which we are commissioned, they draw to themselves and infect with the depravity of their apostasy that countless number of gentiles which inhabit the said provinces, and which cover a greater surface of land than all Europe.

But as the said treatise of the southern hemisphere has not yet been put into a form to be communicated, which will soon be done, I have resolved herein to relate to Your Majesty, although very briefly, some of its contents; in order, meanwhile, to afford the necessary information concerning these southern lands, whither it is proposed to set on foot so great and mighty an undertaking as the evangelical and spiritual conquest of the said hemisphere. In order to understand the question, it must be premised that the whole globe of earth and water is divided into two equal parts or halves by the equinoctial line. The northern hemisphere, which stretches from the equinoctial to the Arctic Pole, contains all which has been hitherto discovered and peopled in Asia, Europe, and the chief part of Africa. The remaining half, or southern hemisphere, which reaches from the equinoctial to the Antarctic Pole, comprises part of what we call America, and the whole of that Austral land,