Wild Americas · Modernised and illustrated edition
Letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha
Modernized, illustrated English edition of Letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha (Carta a El-Rei D. Manuel) by Pero Vaz de Caminha (1500).
In ten days of writing to his king, a Portuguese scribe gives birth to Brazil.
Read more ↓- about 100 pages
- Paperback
- English
- 15th century
Countries covered: Brazil · Spain · Cape Verde
About this book
On 22 April 1500, off an unknown coast, the Portuguese fleet that sailed from Belém for the Indies sights a great mountain. The captain-major names it Mount Pascoal, and the land the Land of Vera Cruz. On board, one man holds the pen: Pero Vaz de Caminha, who promises King Manuel I to put down "nothing more than what I have seen."
Day after day, he tells his story. Eighteen or twenty naked men laying their bows down on the sand, two young guests asleep on the captain's carpet, a harbour sheltered behind a reef. Then the bay of Porto Seguro, the Mass said on the islet, Diogo Dias dancing to the sound of the bagpipe, an old man with a green stone through his lip who understands nothing of the questions about gold, a village of long houses visited by the convicts.
Caminha observes everything with undimmed curiosity: the painted bodies, the feather headdresses, the laughter, the imitated gestures, the beauty of a land of endless waters. He does not judge, he looks, and his wonder crosses the centuries.
Dated from Porto Seguro on 1 May 1500, this letter is the first European gaze cast upon Brazil. What will remain of this meeting once the cross is planted facing the open sea?
Product details
- Publisher
- Itinerarium Éditions
- Series
- Wild Americas
- The author
- Pero Vaz de Caminha
- Date of the journey
- c. 1450–1500
- Modern edition by
- Erik de Boisgrollier
- Language
- English
- Format
- Paperback, 6 × 9 in (15.2 × 22.9 cm)
- Pages
- about 100
The author
Pero Vaz de Caminha
Pero Vaz de Caminha, born around 1450 probably in Porto, held posts at the Mint and in the municipality there before being appointed, in 1500, scribe of the royal trading post at Calicut. He sailed with Cabral's fleet, which reached Brazil on 22 April 1500. On 1 May, from Porto Seguro, he sent King Manuel I the letter describing the new land and its inhabitants. He died at Calicut at the end of 1500, probably in the attack on the trading post, but his letter, printed only in 1817, has become the birth certificate of Brazil.
All books by Pero Vaz de Caminha →The journey mapped
In the Same Place, Through the Centuries
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Amerigo Vespucci, Mundus Novus (1503)
A year after Cabral's passage, a Portuguese fleet returned to explore the new land, and the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci was on board.
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Binot Paulmier de Gonneville, Relation authentique du voyage du capitaine de Gonneville ès nouvelles terres des Indes (1505)
Setting out from Honfleur in 1503 for the Indies, the Norman ship *L'Espoir* was driven by the winds toward a coast of southern Brazil, where the crew stayed several months among Indians who welcomed them.
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Hans Staden, Véritable histoire et description d'un pays habité par des hommes sauvages, nus, féroces et anthropophages (1557)
Half a century after Caminha, the Hessian gunner Hans Staden, who had come to serve the Portuguese in Brazil, fell around 1554 into the hands of the Tupinamba, their enemies, close in language and customs to the inhabitants of…
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Jean de Léry, Histoire d'un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil (1578)
A young Calvinist cobbler, Jean de Léry joined Villegagnon's French colony in Guanabara Bay in 1557.
The modern editor
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