Colonial Brazil as a Way Station for the Portuguese India Fleets

A DISCUSSION of whether the India fleets of Portugal used Brazil as a way station' must take into account at the very beginning the existence of controversy and misunderstanding. When Cabral discovered Brazil in iSoo, the scribe of his fleet described the find to the king as a land valuable, among other things, as a way station for the fleets bound for India.2 When the king, in turn, described the discovery to the Spanish sovereigns, he followed the scribe's language. So convenient and necessary to the India fleets did the land appear that he thought that God must have miraculously wished the Portuguese to find it.3 Because the king considered the land convenient and necessary, many scholars have assumed that it was indeed used as a way station. Professor Duarte Leite, touching on the early history of the Brazilian coast, has taken such scholars to task, though he has not specifically named them.4 The point of view that he reproves, however, may readily be found in the works of, for instance, Keller,5 Handelmann,6 Zimmermann,7 and Friederici.8