Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/203

179 SECOND VOYAGE. 179 forlorn knight-errant, on a desperate and chimerical chapter 2G XVIII. enterprise. ^^ No sooner had the fleet weighed anchor, than Mission to ° ' Portugal. Ferdinand and Isabella despatched an embassy in solemn state to advise the king of Portugal of it. This embassy vi^as composed of two persons of distinguished rank, Don Pedro de Ayala, and Don Garci Lopez de Carbajal. Agreeably to their in- structions, they represented to the Portuguese mon- arch the inadmissibility of his propositions respecting the boundary line of navigation ; they argued that the grants of the Holy See, and the treaty with Spain in 1479, had reference merely to the actual possessions of Portugal, and the right of discovery by an eastern route along the coasts of Africa to the Indies ; that these rights had been invariably respected by Spain ; that the late voyage of Colum- bus struck into a directly opposite track ; and that the several bulls of Pope Alexander the Sixth, prescribing the line of partition, not from east to west, but from the north to the south pole, were intended to secure to the Spaniards the exclusive right of discovery in the western ocean. The am- bassadors concluded with offering, in the name of their sovereigns, to refer the whole matter in dis- pute to the arbitration of the court of Rome, or of any common umpire. 26 Zuiiiga, Annales de Sevilla, p. dec. 1, lib. 1. — Benzoni, Novi 413. — Fernando Colon, Hist, del Orbis Historia, lib. 1, cap. 9. — Almirante, cap. 44. — Bemaldez, Gomara, Hist, de las Indias, cap. Reyes Cat61icos,MS., cap. 118. — 20. Peter Martyr, De Rebus Oceanicis,