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With thirteen ships and about 1200 men, eight religious persons of S.Francisco and eight clergymen, the largest fleet until then organized in Portugal left Lisbon on March 9, 1500, with the mission of founding a colony in India. The armada had experienced navigators, like Bartolomeu Dias and Nicolau Coelho as well as the instruction from Vasco da Gama. On April 22, 1500, after 43 days, passing a storm that moved them away from the African coast, Pedro Alvares Cabral’s fleet viewed Mt. Paschoal at the coast of Bahia. On April 24, the fleet proceeded along the coast to the north in search of shelter, anchoring in Porto Seguro, where the armada stayed until May 2. Soon after, one of the ships went back to Lisbon with the news of the discovery. The rest of the fleet proceeded for Calcutta in India arriving there on September 13. after passing the South African coast. Cabral proceeded along the Indian coast and came back to Europe with spices arriving in Lisbon June 23, 1501. Request to the king for the command of a new expedition to the East, was misunderstood by the monarch and refused. 

Brazilian Literature began in 1500, with the first letter written by Pero Vaz de Caminha in the name of Cabral to Dom Manuel, the king of Portugal regarding the discovery of Brazil. The letters are many and some have been just recently rediscovered. The following are a few lines of these letters. 

Vaz de Caminha wrote: The Indians hair is very strait and of dark color. They cut their hair on the top of the head with no hair around their ears. One of them had a wig made of yellow bird feeders. It was long and thick. It covered his forehead and ears. It looked like it was glued at his hair feeder by feeder. It was put in a way that seemed he has a lot of hair, round and big. It could be taken off from his head like a crown.

When the Indians came to the ship, our Captain (Pedro Alvares de Cabral) was seating in a chair. He was well dressed with big gold Jewels around his neck. Sancho de Tovar, Simao de Miranda, Nicolau Coelho, Aires Correa and my person were part of this first meeting. Except the Capitan, we were all sitting on the floor of the cabin. The Indians came. They put fire in their torch. They came into the ship without saying anything or any sign of welcome. However, one of them looked at the captain’s Jewel and made a sign to the land. It seemed that he was trying to say that there would be gold there. He also saw a silver candle and did the same sign as if there would be silver in the land.

This land, Sir, seems to be big and very long from the North to the South. This land is so big that it would be twenty-five leagues of coast. There are in some parts along the shore red and white earth mountains. There are many trees. From one side to the other side of the coast, the beach is so beautiful. From the sea, we could see that the land is so big. We could not see anything else than land and trees because it seemed to be very long.

In this land, until now we do not know if there is gold, silver, iron or metal. Nevertheless, there is good air, the weather is fresh and temperate as in Entre-Doiro and the city of Minho. At this time, weather is just like in these cities of Portugal. There is a lot of water, which has no end. It is beautiful and if you want to take profit from it, this land will be fruitful. (A Literatura Brasileiro Através dos Textos, Massaud Moisés).

Pedro Álvares Cabral was the son of Fernão Cabral and Isabel Gouveia, born in the castle of Belmonte. Not much is known about his life to the end of the century, except that he was educated at the Court of the Portuguese king João II. In 1499, King Emmanuel of Portugal named him captain of the armada that would make the first expedition to India following the return of Vasco of Gama who in 1497, was send by the Portuguese King to discover the sea passage to India. Pedro Alvares Cabral married in 1503 with Isabel de Castro, a niece of Afonso de Albuquerque and the daughter of the distinguished Fernando de Noronha. He died in 1526 and not much is known of his later life.

The pre-columbian indigenous population in Brazil was widely scattered and probably no more than 1 million at the time Pedro Cabral reached the coast of Brazil. The initially development in Brazil was slow and based on a feudal system in which favored individuals received title to large blocks of land. Because of the great demand for sugar in Europe, the first major economic cycle in Brazil was based upon the sugarcane, grown in plantations along the northeast coast. To work the fields, the early settlers used native labor. When the Indians proved insufficient in numbers, or unable to withstand the hard labor, the importation of millions of slaves from African began. 

The black population of Brazil was brought mainly from the West African coast as it was the case for the North American cotton boom. The first of the cultures brought to Brazil were Sudanese, mainly represented by the groups Yoruba - and Fanti-Ashanti besides many smaller groups of Gambia. The second group brought Brazil the African culture of Nigeria, identified today mostly in Bahia. The third African cultural groups were tribes of the Bantu, coming from today’s area of Angola and current territory of Mozambique.

The African contribution was important to the formation of today's Brazilian culture. In spite of their role as cultural agent to have been more passive than activate, Africans had a crucial importance to the economic development in the early colonies, so much for its presence as the hard-working mass that produced almost everything. 

The early 1500 was a period when Dutch and French for a short time settled in the north- and southeast, building forts and leaving brown-skinned Brazilians with blue eyes behind. Also the time when there was the foundation of the Quilombos (villages) by slaves who escaped from the plantations. These Quilombos were built in isolated areas with hundreds of people raising families, growing crops and fighting to keep their independence. 

After 1700, Gold and diamonds were discovered in Minas Gerais beginning the Brazilian gold cycle and leading to the development and occupation of the west. During the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, King John VI of Portugal took protection in Rio de Janeiro. With the seat of government for Portugal, Brazil witnessed tremendous economic growth. Life was so good in Rio de Janeiro, that after Napoleon was overpowered, the Royal family stayed on until John VI was forced to return to Lisbon. Upheavals in Brazil required the kings son Dom Pedro, to declare Brazil in 1822 independent from Portugal. Still Brazil was a monarchy, while the rest of North and South American became republics. Dom Pedro's personality was mysterious and his ruling unreliable. After a disastrous war with Argentina, Dom Pedro resigned (1831) in favor of his son, Pedro II. The main housing of the monarchs was in Petrópolis in the state of Rio de Janeiro.

Portuguese Hegemony

During that time, life in Europe was hard with hunger as constant phantom. For aristocrats, the problem was rather the availability of spices from the East. These spices were extremely expensive due to the complications of the terrestrial routes. The price for a pound of saffron on the market was two good shaped horses.In 1498, Vasco da Gama reached the objective after all, finding the marine route to India. Cabral's stop in Brazil was alone a scale on a trip to the earth of the spices for the Portuguese economy. The Discoveries are a phenomenon of worldwide European expansion during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in which Portugal played a fundamental and pioneering role.

The Paradise Brazil

Europeans who came to Brazil left Europe during a difficult time. They left a continent where hunger and plagues were constant, the death a permanent ghost - and the hope for a future in another life was a biblical dream. For such suffering people, the arrival to a place where the light was energetic as the green of the forests, fertile soil and the pleasant weather reminded of Genesis. When God made Adam, he put him in to the Garden of Eden with plenty of plants but Brazil had gold and precious stones in too. 

The view of tropical Brazil, with Indians living an innocent way, overlap perfectly with the medieval scholastic and the mystic of the Bible. Christopher Columbus was a great reader of those texts. He believed that he had arrived to the Paradise: he wrote "I believe that if you cross the equinoctial line you will arrive in the Paradise on earth ". Like him, many adventurers that walked intoAmerica tried to find the mythical place. The objectives of the largest search were: the tree of the life, which would give them the whole knowledge and eternal life to those that picked up its fruits. Moreover, a city entirely built with precious stones. The first more spiritual, the second more material. 

The second version of the earthly Paradise always talked about a magic place. It was behind of a fruitful land withtrees full of fruits, rivers of gold and silver packed with precious stones: jasper, sapphires, emeralds, hyacinths, topazes. Crystal towers, with liaisons of pure gold complete the view. Francisco de Orellana did not find the stream when he went down the Amazons River. However, the report of its trip gave to many the certainty that it would be inside of Brazil. Perhaps it is for this metamorphose that European settlements already at the beginning of the 16^th century succeeded in Brazil, while early settlement in North America failed until the success of Plymouth Rock a century later. 

Some say that the name Brazil is not related to the name of a tree, which is also called Pau Brazil, but to Celtic legends. In this case, the word would derive from " O'Brazil ", which would means" the Fortunate " Island, or the Paradise island. Other sources state that Pedro Alvares Cabral expedition was disastrous for he lost to many ships and men. There are also sources that believe that Christopher Columbus was in Brazil first. Nevertheless, Pedro Alvares Cabral is officially known for his discovery of Brazil, which will be celebrated as “500 years of Brazil” on April 22. 2000 AD all over the nation. Siux.