“This arrival appeared to me to be an event of which it was right to inform you; and if on the arrival of the other caravel I receive any additional information, it shall be transmitted to you in like manner.”[278]
Gaspar Cortereal, who was expected to return to Lisbon in the second caravel, never reached Portugal. Miguel, his brother, sailed from Lisbon in May 1502, with three ships, to search for Gaspar and the missing vessel, but he was never heard of again, and it was conjectured that both of the brothers had been slain by the savages from whom they had taken so many of their relatives to serve as slaves in Portugal.
No little enthusiasm was created at the court of Portugal by Cabral’s report of the discovery of the Land of the True Cross. King Emmanuel at once ordered three vessels to be equipped to sail to the new country. Having heard of the voyages made by Amerigo Vespucci to the Land of Pearls (Terra delle Perle), he wrote to Vespucci in Seville, and solicited him to enter his service. The illness of the explorer did not then permit him to accept the tempting offer of the king of Portugal. However, when he was afterward visited by the king’s ambassador, Giuliano di Bartolomeo del Giocondo, Vespucci consented to go to Lisbon and to be commissioned by King Emmanuel to accompany the fleet that was prepared to sail to Terra de Vera Cruz. His departure from Spain, he says, was a matter of regret to all who knew him, because there he was honored, and there the king had a right to claim his services.[279] Narrating the incidents of his third voyage to the New World, Vespucci writes:
“We departed from the port of Lisbon, three ships in company, on the tenth of May, 1501, and took our course directly for the Grand Canary Islands.... From there we sailed to the coast of Ethiopia, and arrived at the port called Beseneghe, in the torrid zone.... We left this port of Ethiopia and steered to the southwest.... In sixty-seven days we reached land lying seven hundred leagues southwest of that port.... The season was very unfavorable for the voyage, particularly when we approached the equator, where, in the month of June, it is winter.... It pleased God, however, to show us a new country on the seventeenth of August. Then we anchored at the distance of a half league from the coast. We got out our boats and went on land to see if the country were inhabited, and if it were, by what class of people. We found that it was inhabited by a people of a lower condition than that of beasts.... We took possession of it in the name of his majesty. It lies five degrees south of the equator.... We sailed in a southeasterly direction, on a line parallel with the coast, making many landings, but never discovering any natives who could converse with us. Running on this course, we found the land made a turn to the southwest. As soon as we doubled the cape, which we named the Cape of St. Augustine, we began to sail to the southwest.... This cape is eight degrees south of the equator.”[280]
While the explorers were sailing along the east coast of Brazil, they arrived at a place where they anchored five days. “Here,” says Vespucci, “we found carmine stems very large and green, and some already dry on the tops of the trees. We left this port, always sailing to the southwest in sight of the land, making many anchorages and treating with innumerable people. We went so far toward the south that we were beyond the tropic of Capricorn where the south pole is elevated thirty-two degrees above the horizon. We had entirely lost sight of the Little Bear, and the Great Bear was very low, almost on the verge of the horizon.[281] We steered by the stars of the south pole, which are many, and much larger and brighter than those of our pole. I traced the figures of the greater part of them, particularly those of the first and greater magnitude, giving an explanation of the circuits which they made around the pole, together with a description of their diameters and semi-diameters, as may be seen in my four journeys. We ran about seven hundred and fifty leagues along this coast.... We saw a great number of redwood (verzino) and cassia trees, and of those which produce myrrh.... We found ourselves in such a high southern latitude, that the south pole was elevated above the horizon fifty-two degrees.... The cold [on the seventh of April, 1502] was so severe that no one in the fleet could endure it.... We agreed that the superior captain[282] should make signals for the fleet to turn about, and that we should depart from this land and steer our course in the direction of Portugal.”
After touching at the port of Sierra Leone, and at the Azores, the explorers reached the port of Lisbon on the seventh day of September, 1502.[283]
Vespucci was again sent by the king of Portugal, in 1503, with a fleet of six ships commanded by Gonçalo Coelho, to discover an island “toward the east called Melaccha, which we know lies in the sea,” says Vespucci, “thirty-three degrees from the south pole.” Departing from the port of Lisbon on the tenth of May, the vessels stood for the Cape Verd Islands. After going to Sierra Leone on the coast of Africa, the fleet sailed toward the southwest. On this course one of the vessels struck on a rock, and was abandoned by the crew. On the east coast of Brazil, the fleet entered the harbor which the Portuguese called the Bay of All Saints (Bahia de todos os Santos). At a harbor two hundred and sixty leagues farther south, or in eighteen degrees south latitude, a fortress was erected, and garrisoned with twenty-four men. The fleet then sailed for Portugal, and entered the port of Lisbon on the eighteenth of June, 1504.[284]
The opinion of Columbus that a strait could be found to the south or southwest of Cuba through which ships might sail to Cathay, induced Vicente Yañez Pinzon and Juan Diaz de Solis in 1506 to search along the coast bordering the Bay of Honduras for a navigable passage to the Indian Ocean.[285] They held the same course as the admiral, says Herrera, “and sailing as far as the islands Guanajos steered westward as far as Golfo Dulce, but did not see it, for it lies hid. However, they observed the inlet the sea makes between the land that forms the bay and the coast of Iucatan.... From where they descried the Sierras of Caria, they steered northward and discovered a great part of the main-land of Iucatan.”[286]
The unique and peculiarly shaped map made by the German cartographer, Johann Ruysch, contained in the edition of Claudius Ptolemy’s geography, printed at Rome, in 1508,[287] is the earliest engraved chart on which appear the fields of discovery, in the western hemisphere, entered by Columbus, Cabot, Cortereal, Cabral, Vespucci, and other early explorers of the coast of the new continent.