At the end of the fifteenth century, while the Pope was still regarded as standing arbitrator in the disputes of Christendom, Alexander VI had decreed to Portugal the discoveries of the East. The discovery of the Cape route to India was the first-fruits of that dispensation, and, for the greater part of the succeeding century, Portugal was admitted to hold in lawful possession, not only the territories of her conquest in India, but also the ocean ways which led thither. From the first landing of Da Gamaat Calicut in 1498, the policy of the Portuguese was to maintain an absolute supremacy in Eastern waters. Their aim was not territorial dominion, but only command of the seas and of trade routes, in pursuance of which they sought positions of advantage, whether ports or islands, some of which they won by force, others by diplomacy. It was a curious feature of the age that the other nations of Europe in some sense acknowledged their right to the possession of the Cape route, without acknowledging their exclusive right to Eastern trade. So it was that the Dutch and English navigators, believing they had an equal right to Indian trade, if they could only get at it by some other route, spent long and toilsome years of maritime apprenticeship in their search after the North-west Passage.