Some historians take him more seriously than this.  Southey, for one, appears to accept Vespucci very much at his own valuation, and states that the honour of having formed the first settlement in Brazil is due to Amerigo Vespucci.

The Spaniards claim this distinction for their famous seaman, Vicente Pinzon.  Pinzon sailed from Spain in December, 1499.  He shaped a more southerly course than any previous navigator in the Spanish service, and he appears to have made his landfall in the neighbourhood of Pernambuco.  He went ashore, it would seem, at a spot he named Cape Consolation, and of this he took possession in the name of the Spanish Crown.  His voyage, however, appears to have had very little practical result, for almost immediately afterwards he returned to Europe, and no steps seem to have been taken by the Spanish Court for the colonization of the land which he had discovered.

[Illustration:  COLUMBUS LANDING IN AMERICA.

From a seventeenth-century engraving.]

The Portuguese, for their part, assert that the territories of Brazil were first sighted by their great navigator, Pedro Alvarez Cabral.  The discovery was in one sense something of an accident.  It was necessary for the seamen who were setting their course for the East Indies to steer well to the west, in order to avoid the zones of calms which prevail in the neighbourhood of the African coast.  Cabral appears to have steered so boldly into the west that he fell in with the coast of Brazil.  This was in 1500.  Word of this event was sent to Portugal, and the enterprising little kingdom, at that time at the height of her maritime power, made preparations to colonize the country.

The auspices under which the Spaniards and the Portuguese arrived in the New World were curiously different.  The Spaniards were frankly in quest of gold, and in many cases ransacked the fertile agricultural lands in search of minerals which were non-existent.  The Portuguese, on the other hand, had no reason to suspect the presence of precious metals in their new colony, and it was in the first instance for its vegetable products that the land, so rich in minerals, became famed.

It was only natural that the pioneer Portuguese should have been struck with the admirable quality of the valuable Brazilian woods.  Shipments of timber were the first to be sent from the new colony to the Mother Country.  It was from this very wood that Portuguese South America took its name, since much of it, being of a brilliant red colour, was known in the Portuguese language as “brasa.”

Just about this time the Portuguese fitted out the most imposing fleet which had ever left their shores.  It was commanded by one of the greatest of Portuguese explorers, Vasco da Gama, and was destined to sail round the Cape of Good Hope to the Indies—­the new and marvellous land of spices.  The fleet was worthy of its commander; it was made up of no fewer than thirteen vessels, and was manned by some 1,200 men.