Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
For over half a century Portugal had been trying to break the
Muslim stranglehold on the Orient trade. She had fought fruitless
battles with the Levantine Moors. She had sent ill-fated expeditions
to search for Prester John, the African Christian king of legend. She
had, more profitably, probed the western seaboard of the southern
continent, building forts and trading posts from which to plunder
the land of the black men. Then, in 1488, some three years before
young Magellan came to Lisbon, the streets of the capital buzzed
with the news that Captain Diaz had found Africa's southernmost tip
and sailed past it into another ocean. The seaway to the East was
open.
John II wasted no time in exploiting this new discovery. He sent
Pedro da Covilha overland to Asia to spy out the strengths and weak-
nesses of the Arab and Persian merchant princes who controlled In-
dian Ocean trade. He sent his captains on secret voyages into the
southern Atlantic to learn more about the prevailing winds and cur-
rents. At the same time he cleared the diplomatic ground with Spain.
In 1492-3 Christopher Colombus had set off westwards in an at-
tempt to reach those very golden lands that King John's captains
were seeking and returned, as he claimed, triumphant and success-
ful. Originally he had offered his services to the 'perfect prince' and
John had considered his scheme. But the royal advisers asserted
(rightly, as we now know) that Columbus vastly underestimated the
distance from Iberia to Cathay by the western route. So the Genoese
captain offered his services to the Spanish crown, an example not
lost on young Magellan.
The immediate result was a hotting up of the race to establish
commercial links with the Orient. To forestall this rivalry leading
to colonial warfare between two Christian princes, Rodrigo Borgia
who as Alexander VI had dragged the papacy to its lowest level of
corruption, calmly divided the world in two. His line was drawn
a hundred leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. He allotted all
