By the papal bull the Portuguese possessions were limited to the east of the line of no variation.  Information derived from certain Egyptian Jews had reached that government, that it was possible to sail round the continent of Africa, there being at its extreme south a cape which could be easily doubled.  An expedition of three ships under Vasco de Gama set sail, July 9, 1497; it doubled the cape on November 20th, and reached Calicut, on the coast of India, May 19, 1498.  Under the bull, this voyage to the East gave to the Portuguese the right to the India trade.

Until the cape was doubled, the course of De Gama’s ships was in a general manner southward.  Very soon, it was noticed that the elevation of the pole-star above the horizon was diminishing, and, soon after the equator was reached, that star had ceased to be visible.  Meantime other stars, some of them forming magnificent constellations, had come into view—­the stars of the Southern Hemisphere.  All this was in conformity to theoretical expectations founded on the admission of the globular form of the earth.

The political consequences that at once ensued placed the Papal Government in a position of great embarrassment.  Its traditions and policy forbade it to admit any other than the flat figure of the earth, as revealed in the Scriptures.  Concealment of the facts was impossible, sophistry was unavailing.  Commercial prosperity now left Venice as well as Genoa.  The front of Europe was changed.  Maritime power had departed from the Mediterranean countries, and passed to those upon the Atlantic coast.

But the Spanish Government did not submit to the advantage thus gained by its commercial rival without an effort.  It listened to the representations of one Ferdinand Magellan, that India and the Spice Islands could be reached by sailing to the west, if only a strait or passage through what had now been recognized as “the American Continent” could be discovered; and, if this should be accomplished, Spain, under the papal bull, would have as good a right to the India trade as Portugal.  Under the command of Magellan, an expedition of five ships, carrying two hundred and thirty- seven men, was dispatched from Seville, August 10, 1519.

Magellan at once struck boldly for the South American coast, hoping to find some cleft or passage through the continent by which he might reach the great South Sea.  For seventy days he was becalmed on the line; his sailors were appalled by the apprehension that they had drifted into a region where the winds never blew, and that it was impossible for them to escape.  Calms, tempests, mutiny, desertion, could not shake his resolution.  After more than a year he discovered the strait which now bears his name, and, as Pigafetti, an Italian, who was with him, relates, he shed fears of joy when he found that it had pleased God at length to bring him where he might grapple with the unknown dangers of the South Sea, “the Great and Pacific Ocean.”