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de S. Maria de la Consolacion.1 He then turned to the
north and west, discovered the mighty floods of the
Maranon, and, like his predecessor, sailed through the
Dragon's mouth into the Caribbean Sea. Diego de Lepe,
who had left Palos about a month after Pinzon, fell in
with the same cape, which he named Rostro hermoso—
" the beautiful bill"—and seems to have explored the
coast for some distance to the south, before he proceeded
to his destination.

Pedro Alvarez Cabral was the first Portuguese who
touched the coast of Brazil. Whether he was carried
thither by the equatorial current against his will, or
sought for it in virtue of the instructions he had received,
is still an open question.2 He sighted the land on
April 21, 1500, in lat. 17° S., and as it was Eastertide he
named a conspicuous mountain, which was in front of
him, Monte Pascual, and the land itself Terra da Vera
Cruz—the land of the true cross. A " safe harbour"—
porto seguro—about forty miles to the north of his landfall,
afforded him shelter from a storm. Having despatched
Caspar de Lemos to Europe with news of his discovery,
he started, on May 8, on his disastrous voyage to the
Cape of Good Hope and India. In the course of this
voyage he perhaps discovered the small island of
Trinidade.3

So impressed was the King with the discovery of a
resting-place for vessels sailing round the Cape that he
almost immediately, on May 13, 1501, despatched an
expedition from Lisbon to follow up the discovery made
by Cabral. The name of the commander of this expedition
is not known, but there is no doubt that Vespucci
was a member of it. The expedition fell in with the

1 Pinzon (Navarrete, III., doc. No. 69), in the evidence given in
1513, distinctly identifies the Cabo de Consolacion discovered by him
with the Cabo de S. Augustin, but an examination of the charts of the
period would justify us to look upon the capes consecutively known as
Cabo de S. Maria de la Consolation, Rostro hermoso, Cabo de S.Cruz and
S. Jorge as being identical with Cabo de S. Roque of the Portuguese in
lat. 5° 28' S.

2 J. Norberto de Sousa e Silva (' Revista trimensal do inst. hist, do
Brazil,' XV., 1852, p. 125) and Capt. A. A. Baldaque da Silva (' Centenario
do Descobrimento da America,' Lisbon, 1892) argue in favour of design.

3 This would have happened during the first half of May, 1500, in
which year Ascension Day fell on May 28 and Trinity Sunday on June 14.
There is no doubt, however, that the small island now known as Trinidad,
was "found" on May 18, 1502, by Estevao da Gama. The reports of
Thome Lopes (Ramusio, I.) and Mateo of Bergamo (Hiimmerich, ' Vasco
da Gama,' Munich, 1898, p. 193), who both were in this fleet, leave no
doubt on this point. The island was once more " found " by Affonso de
Albuquerque, in 1503. Duarte Pacheco Pereira, who commanded the
"Conceicao" in that voyage, calls the island S. Ascencao, and correctly
gives its approximate latitude (' Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis,' Lisbon, 1892,
p. 16; and also the letter of Giovanni of Empoli published by Ramusio).
The island appears for the first time in Dr. Hamy's map, about 1502, but
without a name. On a Portuguese chart (see No. 10 of our Maplets,
p. 36), three islands are shown, viz., Ascension, Trinidade and Martin
Vaz. Ascension and Trinidade evidently refer to the same island, while
Martin Vaz, a rocky islet further east, is named after its discoverer, Martin
Vaz Pacheco, who went with Pedro de Mascarenhas to India in 1511.
Diego Ribero, 1529, has an " Ya de S. M. de agosto," which simply means

Island of the Ascension of St. Mary," which is celebrated on August 15.

land in 5° S. at Cabo de S. Roque, after which it followed
the coast, certainly 9H far south as the Rio de Cananea/
in 25° S. On February 13 the vessels departed
from the land, and having sailed in a south-easterly
direction for 500 leagues, to 52° S., they discovered,
on April 2, a barren island, along which they coasted
for twenty leagues, after which they turned northward
towards home.8

The Fleet of Affonso de Albuquerque, which left
Lisbon on April 16, 1503, seems to have followed the
coast of Brazil as far as an Ilha de Santo Amaro which,
according to Duarte Pacheco is 3^ degrees to the north
of Cabo Frio, which he places in 25°, its true latitude
being only 23°. An island of that name off the harbour
of Santos, in lat. 24° S., finds a place upon our modern
maps, but it is very doubtful whether it is the island
referred to by Pacheco.

The last expedition to be noticed had for its avowed
object the search for a passage to the spice-lands of the
Moluccas by doubling the southern extremity of the
"New World." This expedition left Lisbon in June
1503. Gonzalo Coelho seems to have been in command ;
Vespucci sailed in one of its vessels and, on his own
showing, played a leading part. The results were
disappointing, for the highest latitude reached was 18° S.

This summary of explorations carried on up to
Behaim's death, in 1507, shows us that the Rio de
Cananea in lat. 25° 5' S., was the furthest point reached.
The charts of the period bear this out," for upon none of
them do we find a place name to the south of this river,
occasionally corrupted into a Rio de Cananor, and placed
as far south as 29° and even 40°. Nor had there been
discovered any estuary, or bay, promising to lead into an
Eastern Ocean. No " terra australis " or Antarctis is
referred to, or shown upon any map. Under these
circumstances we are justified in believing that the chart
referred to by Pigafetta as showing a "strait" cannot
have been the work of Martin Behaim, who died in 1507.7
At the same time there existed a belief that the southern

* La Cananea is a festival celebrated on the first Thursday in Lent;
in 1502, on February 10.

» Valentin Ferdinand (' Abhdlgn. d. bayr. Ak. d. Wiss.,' 3 CI., t. VIII.,
1860, p. 787), in a notarial Act signed on August 4, 1504, refers to this
expedition as having sailed to 53° S. Varnhagen, ' Amerigo Vespucci'
(Lima, 1865, p. 110), suggests that Vespucci reached Southern Georgia in
lat. 54°. Perhaps it was the island of Tristao da Cunha, in lat. 37° S.,
whither he was carried by winds and currents. M. F. d'Enciso,' Suma de
Geografia' (Seville, 1519) places a " tierra Austral" 600 leagues to the
S.E. ^ S. of Cabo de S. Agostinho, and 450 leagues from the Cape of Good
Hope, in 42° S. This seems to represent the land found by TristSo da
Cunha in 1506, but possibly discovered by an earlier expedition.

6 See p. 36, Maplets 1-5.

7 " It is more than doubtful whether the map seen by Magelhaes was
actually the work of M. Behaim" (Dr. Wieser, ' Magalhaes-Strasse,' 1881,
p. 51). The learned Harrisse, on the other hand, believed that " Behaim
doubtless traced hypothetically the celebrated strait which Magellan was
destined to discover thirty years after " (' Discovery of North America,'
Paris, 1892, p. 438).