Cabral commanded 13 ships sent to follow Vasco da Gama's route to India. Sailing far west into the Atlantic, the fleet sighted a mountain the sailors named Monte Pascoal, for Easter week. The Portuguese stayed about ten days, meeting the local Tupiniquim people and holding a Mass on shore. The fleet's scribe, Pêro Vaz de Caminha, described the land in a long letter to King Manuel I. Brazil became Portugal's largest colony. Whether the landfall was accidental is still debated.
The fleet left Lisbon on March 9, 1500, the largest Portugal had yet sent to the east. To catch favourable winds around Africa, its pilots swung far to the southwest. On April 21, sailors saw seaweed floating on the water, a sign of land, and on the afternoon of Wednesday, April 22, they sighted a large rounded mountain. Cabral named it Monte Pascoal, and the land Ilha de Vera Cruz, the island of the True Cross, believing it might be an island.
The ships moved up the coast to a safe harbour, and the Portuguese spent several days on land. Pêro Vaz de Caminha's letter to the king describes people who went naked "without any shame", traded parrots and bows for bells and caps, and joined in, curiously, at the first Mass. Cabral sent a supply ship back to Lisbon with the news and left behind two convicts to learn the language.
Then the fleet sailed on. Near the Cape of Good Hope a storm sank four ships, including one commanded by Bartolomeu Dias, the first European to round the cape. Cabral reached Calicut in September. Historians still argue about whether Portugal already knew land lay to the west.
Key people: Pedro Álvares Cabral, Pêro Vaz de Caminha