Note 326-2 — NARRATIVE OF THE THIRD VOYAGE OF COLUMBUS AS CONTAINED IN LAS CASAS’S HISTORY
Reading edition
This reason for the desire of King John of Portugal to have the Demarcation Line moved further west has escaped all the writers on the subject. If Columbus reported the king’s ideas correctly, we may have here a clew to one of the reasons why Cabral went so far to the southwest in 1500 that he discovered Brazil when on his voyage to India, and perhaps also one of the reasons why Vasco da Gama struck off so boldly into the South Atlantic. Cf. Bourne, Spain in America, pp. 72, 74.