Menezes, a Portuguese navigator, is said to have been driven by a storm to some of these islands, where he remained awaiting the monsoonal change.] Meanwhile the Spaniards, after the discovery of America by Columbus, were pursuing their navigations and explorations westward with the same object in view, and it soon dawned upon them that a vast ocean separated them from the islands discovered by the Portuguese.
Magellan was then sent out in search of a westerly passage; he reached the regions where the Portuguese had established themselves, and disputes arose as to the limits of the Portuguese and Spanish boundaries.
Pope Alexander VI.

had generously bestowed one-half of the undiscovered world upon the Spanish, and the other half upon the Portuguese, charging each nation with the conversion of the heathen within its prospective domains.
Merely as a fact this is interesting enough, but viewed in the light of subsequent events it assumes a specific importance.
The actual size of the earth was not known at the time, and this division of Pope Alexander's, measured from the other side of the world, resulted in an overlapping and duplicate charting of the Portuguese and Spanish boundaries in the longitudes of the Spice Islands,* an overlapping due, no doubt, principally to the desire of each contending party to include the Spice Islands within its own hemisphere, but also to the fact that the point of departure which had been fixed in the vicinity of the Azores, was subsequently removed westward as far as the mouth of the Amazons.
If Portugal and Spain had remained to the present day in possession of their respective hemispheres, the first arrangement would have given Australia and New Guinea to Portugal; whereas the second arrangement would have limited her possessions at the longitude that separates Western Australia from her sister States to the east, which States would have fallen to the lot of Spain.

Strange to say, this line of demarcation still separates Western Australia from South Australia so that those two States derive their boundary demarcation from Pope Alexander's line.
A few years after the discovery of the New World the Spanish Government found it necessary, in order to regulate her navigations, and ascertain what new discoveries were being made, to order the creation of an official map of the world, in the composition of which the skill and knowledge of all her pilots and captains were sought.
Curiously enough, as it may appear, there is an open sea where the Australian continent should be marked on this official map.
Are we to infer that no land had been sighted in that region?
Such a conclusion may be correct, but we must bear in mind that prior to the year 1529, when this map was made,* the Spaniards had sailed along 250 leagues of the northern shores of an island which they called the _Island of Gold_, afterwards named New Guinea, and yet there are no signs of that discovery to be found on the Spanish official map.

It is evident, therefore, that this part of the world could not have been charted up to date.

This is not extraordinary, for it was not uncommon in those days, nor was it deemed strange that many years should elapse before the results of an expedition could be known at head-quarters.