288
LIFE A N D V O Y A G E S
OF
[BOOK
V.
voyage; his satisfaction at finding that the admiral had been instructed to steer westward from the Canary Islands, and his hope that the Castilian sovereigns would continue to enjoin a similar track on their navigators,—all to the south of those islands being granted by papal bull to the crown of Portugal.
He con
cluded by intimating the entire confidence of King John, that should any of the newly-discovered islands appertain by right to Portugal, the matter would be adjusted in that spirit of amity which existed between the two crowns. Ferdinand was too wary a politician to be easily deceived. He had received early intelligence of the real designs of King John, and before the arrival of his ambassador had himself dispatched Don Lope de Herrera to the Portuguese court, fur nished with double instructions, and with two letters of widely opposite tenor.
The first was couched in affectionate terms,
acknowledging the hospitality and kindness shown to Columbus, and communicating the nature of his discoveries; requesting at the same time that the Portuguese navigators might be prohibited from visiting those newly-discovered lands, in the same manner that the Spanish sovereigns had prohibited their subjects from interfering with the African possessions of Portugal. In case, however, the ambassador should find that King John had either sent, or was about to send, vessels to the New World, he was to withhold the amicable letter, and present the other, couched in stern and peremptory terms, and forbidding any enterprise of the kind.* A keen diplomatic game ensued between the two sove reigns, perplexing to any spectator not acquainted with the secret of their play.
Resende, in his history of King John II, informs
* Herrera, Hist. Ind., decad. i. lib. ii. cap. 25.
Zurita, Anales de Aragon, lib. i.