“Upon sowing, everything grows!”—wrote a Navy registrar, expressing amazement with Brazil’s luxuriant nature in a 1500 report to the Portuguese king (Caminha 1981).[1] Pero Vaz de Caminha, a registrar with Pedro Alvares de Cabral’s pioneering expedition to Brazil signed this letter to the Portuguese king on May 1st, 1500. It was first published in 1817; see C. Prado Junior, “Introdução”, in Casal, Corografia Brasilica, xxix. This statement was an early manifestation of European excitement with the exuberance and uniqueness of the flora in Terra Brasilis. From that time onward, European travelers, missionaries, and physicians, never stopped reporting on previously unknown plants and animals, as well as on Amerindian civilizations. While many of those visitors spent some time among Indigenous populations, to make their presence in the “New” World permanent, Europeans required alternative food sources. Shipments from Europe were both expensive and sporadic, and more often than not also arrived in a damaged condition. In addition, they had to learn how to identify unknown diseases and their respective treatments. Therefore, surveying their immediate surroundings proved essential for survival. For this reason, it comes as no surprise that the earliest settlers, including Jesuit missionaries, immediately explored the wealth of the three kingdoms of nature. Despite this, the fact that this knowledge was omitted from any publications written in Portuguese for many centuries still puzzles scholars to this day.
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| ↑1 | Pero Vaz de Caminha, a registrar with Pedro Alvares de Cabral’s pioneering expedition to Brazil signed this letter to the Portuguese king on May 1st, 1500. It was first published in 1817; see C. Prado Junior, “Introdução”, in Casal, Corografia Brasilica, xxix. |
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