The Spanish sovereigns, in order to obtain the privilege of extending their sway over the islands discovered by Columbus, immediately sent embassadors to Rome to request Pope Alexander VI. to confirm the title of Spain to the recently found lands, for it was then believed that the pope had sole and absolute authority to dispose of all countries inhabited by heathen peoples. Pope Martin V. and his successors had already granted to the crown of Portugal the possession of all the lands it might acquire by right of discovery beyond Cape Bojador toward the East. Pope Alexander VI., to reward the Spaniards for wresting Spain from the Moors, issued a bull, on the fourth of May, 1493, establishing a line of limitation, running from the north to the south pole, distant one hundred leagues west of the Azores and the Cape Verd Islands, giving to Spain all the lands she had discovered or might discover west of it, which had not been acquired by any Christian power before the preceding Christmas, and to Portugal all the territory, on the same conditions, which lay east of it. These territorial concessions of the pope caused the possessions of Spain, in the western hemisphere, to be called the West Indies, and those of Portugal, in the eastern hemisphere, the East Indies. The position of the line of demarkation displeased the Portuguese. To settle the dispute which it caused, the two countries sent commissioners to Tordesillas, Spain, who agreed, on the seventh of June, 1494, that the position of the line should be changed so that it should pass, north and south, three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verd Islands. Meanwhile in Spain a fleet of seventeen ships had been fitted out to sail to the Indies in the West. About fifteen hundred Spanish adventurers took passage on the different vessels, which were freighted with agricultural and mining implements, horses, cattle, and stores of various kinds, necessary for planting colonies on the newly-discovered islands. Commanded by Columbus, the fleet weighed anchor in the roadstead of Cadiz, on Wednesday, the twenty-fifth of September, 1493, and thence sailed toward the West India archipelago.