_Brazil_ had previously been discovered both by Pinzon and Cabral. His account of his voyage, addressed to Lorenzo de Medici, was published at Strasburg in 1505. It is said to have been printed in Venice in 1504. [Sidenote: 1504.] In the spring of the ensuing year (1503) Vespucci again sailed from Lisbon with a squadron of six vessels, of which, however, he only commanded one ship. After many disasters and the loss of one vessel of the squadron, he reached _Brazil_, with his own ship alone, at the celebrated bay of All Saints, _Bahia_. There he remained two months in the hope of being joined by the rest of the fleet. He then sailed two hundred and sixty leagues to the south, where he remained for five months, building a fort and taking in a cargo of brazil-wood. In the fort he left a garrison of twenty-four men and set sail for Lisbon, where he arrived in June 1504. The other four vessels of the squadron were never afterwards heard of. Early in the following year Amerigo Vespucci was at Seville on his way to the Spanish court in quest of employment, and was the bearer of a letter from Columbus to his son Diego, in which the great navigator, speaking of Vespucci, says, “Fortune has been adverse to him as to many others. His labours have not profited him as they reasonably should have done.... He goes with the determination to do all that is possible for me.” It is pathetic to hear the great discoverer thus speaking of the man whose name was to usurp the place of Columbus on the two continents of the New World. The cargo of brazil-wood which had been brought by Amerigo to Lisbon was so much esteemed that a trade in it at once sprang up, and the result was that the coast whence it was procured, and finally the whole neighbouring country, came to be called _Brazil_. The Portuguese Government determined to colonize the land, and accordingly despatched thither, in the first instance, a portion of the criminal population of Portugal. [Sidenote: 1508.]