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This was the moment that witnessed the arrival of Alfonzo d'Albuquerque, the man destined to be the real creator of the Portuguese Empire in the Indies. Diaz, Cabral, and Gama, had prepared the way, but Albuquerque was the leader of large views who was needed to determine which were the principal towns that must be seized in order to place the Portuguese dominion upon a solid and lasting basis.
The ships being refitted, Cabral resumed the voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, near which they again experienced a violent storm, in which one of the ships was separated from the fleet, after firing signals of distress, and was never seen again during the voyage.
Brazil, where a squadron under Cabral had touched as early as 1502, was by 1550 a prosperous colony, and in later centuries a chief source of wealth. Mozambique, Mombassa, and Malindi, on the southeastern coast of Africa, were taken and fortified as intermediate bases to protect the route to Asia.
On receiving this intelligence, Cabral sent Alonso Hurtado to the zamorin, intimating that the Portuguese fleet had come on purpose to settle trade and friendship, and that the general wished for an audience in which to arrange these matters with his highness.
Diaz was appointed to a command under him, but he had not the satisfaction of witnessing the results of his own discovery; for he returned when the fleet had reached St. Jago, was employed in a secondary command under Cabral, in the expedition in which Brazil was discovered, and in his passage from that country to the Cape, four ships, one of which he commanded, perished with all on board.
Here to the south is Paria that he found no matter what Ojeda and Nino and Cabral have done since! stretching westward how far no man knoweth, and between is a great sea holding Jamaica and we do not know what other islands. Cuba and Paria curving south and north and between them where they shall come closest surely a strait into the sea of Rich India!"
On the 9th of March, 1500, a fleet of thirteen vessels left Rastello, under the command of Pedro Alvarès Cabral; on board, as a volunteer, was Luiz de Camoens, who in his poem the "Lusiad," was to render illustrious the valour and adventurous spirit of his countrymen. But little is known of Cabral, and nothing of the reason which had gained him the command of this important expedition.
Cabral immediately sent off the master of his ship in a small boat to examine the country, who reported that it appeared pleasant and fertile, with extensive woods and many inhabitants. The fleet was brought to anchor, and the master sent again on shore to examine more narrowly into the state of the country and its inhabitants.
The achievement of Vasco de Gama, of the long-attempted navigation to India by the Cape of Good Hope, was one of the signal events of the day. Pedro Alvarez Cabral, following in his track, had made a most successful voyage, and returned with his vessels laden with the precious commodities of the East.
All, however, that we can deduce from accidental voyages, like that of the Spaniard, Alvarez de Cabral, across the ocean is that even if there had been no other way for mankind to reach America they could have landed there by ship from the Old World. In such a case, of course, the coming of man to the American continent would have been an extremely recent event in the long history of the world.
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