ASKIA MOHAMMED ABOU BEKR 187 position of the dividing-line was decided by a commission which met at Torde9illas in January 1494, and after much discussion the point through which the line should pass was fixed at 370 leagues west of Cape Verde.

Thus it happened that while Spain was about to expel the Moors entirely from her dominions, and to close the ports of the Mediterranean, so far as lay in her power, against them, Portugal was invested by the Pope with supreme authority over those territories of the Western Soudan which the Spanish Arabs had always regarded as their natural though unconquered appanage in Africa.

As the resolution conceived by Askia in 1493 was not carried out till 1495, it is possible in point of time that he may have been already acquainted with the movements that were taking place in the Western world, and that his investiture by the Egyptian Caliph was part of a general drawing together of the Mussulman forces in the East. But of this, if it was so, we have no trace.

I have been unable to find any allusion to interest expressed or felt in the Soudan in the great discoveries of Columbus and Vasco da Gama. Rather it would seem that the conquest of the Moors by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, shortly followed as it was by the total expulsion of that people from Europe, must be regarded as closing the connection of the Moors, and through them of the Soudan, with the progressive life and science of the West.

Yet it was from Cairo, only a few years before the visit of Askia, that news had been sent to King John II. of Portugal of a south Cape of Africa with which Arabian mariners, who had long been accustomed to the use of compass, quadrants, and sea-charts, were well acquainted.

It was a matter of comon knowledge to their seamen that the African concment terminated with a cape, and that there was no difficulty in the way of sailing round it to the west. Two Jews took the information to King John that it could be easily doubled from the west, and to prove their statement took also with them an Arabic map of the African coast. In consequence of this infor-