Within a few years the spanish had coasted very nearly the whole of the American continent, and claimed an exclusive right to it, with the exception of the Brazils which were conceded to the Portuguese. These claims were comfirmed by Pope Alexander VI's Bull of Donation, by which all the lands discovered or to be discovered 'in the west toward the Indies or the Ocean Seas' were to be partitioned between Spain and Portugal, and if any ships of other nations crossed a line west of the Azores or north of the Tropic of Capricorn, 'all were considered pirates'.

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