The difference between the two lines was not supposed to be important.
The decision thus made was long respected.

Under a mistaken impression as to the longitude of the Philippine Islands in the East Indies, Spain has held those islands, under this line of division, ever since their discovery by Magellan.

She considered herself entitled to all the islands and lands between the meridian thus drawn in the Atlantic and the similar meridian one hundred and eighty degrees away, on exactly the other side of the world.
Under the same line of division, Portugal held, for three centuries and more, Brazil, which projects so far eastward into the Atlantic as to cross this line of division.
Fearful, all the time, that neither the pope's decree, nor any diplomacy would prevent the king of Portugal from attempting to seize lands at the west, the Spanish court pressed with eagerness arrangements for a second expedition.

It was to be on a large and generous scale and to take out a thousand men.

For this was the first plan, though the number afterwards was increased to fifteen hundred.