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 xl exist in the Great Pacific Ocean had carried Magellan's fleet rapidly down to the Philippines and Moluccas, those who returned from this expedition always maintained that these latter islands were in the hemisphere of the Spaniards, who consequently laid claim to traffic there. They were even on the point of sending out a new expedition thither, when king John III begged Charles V to have the question examined by competent persons, and promised to acquiesce in their decision. The two governments appointed twenty-four, or even a greater number, both Spaniards and Portuguese, well skilled in geography and navigation, who from the commencement of March 1524, met alternately in the two cities of Badajos and Elvas, on the frontiers of the two states. Three months were allowed them to decide definitely to whom these islands belonged.

These commissioners, among whom was Sebastian del Cano, who had brought back the Victoria, consumed at the outset a considerable time in consulting globes and charts, and in comparing the journals of pilots. They examined the distance between the Moluccas and the line of demarcation. They disputed much, and came to no conclusion. More than two months passed away in this manner; and they reached the latter part of May, which had been fixed as the term of the conferences.

The Spanish commissioners then settled the line of demarcation at three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, as it had been fixed in 1494; and as, on the basis of the charts which they had then before them, they made the opposite line, which was to be at the distance of a hundred and eighty degrees, pass through the Malay peninsula, they included in their own hemisphere not only the Moluccas, but also the islands of Java and Borneo, part of Sumatra, the coast of China, and part of the Malay peninsula itself. The Portuguese did not agree to this limitation, which was too disadvantageous for themselves; on the