Gaspar Cortereal, who was expected to return to Lisbon in the second caravel, never reached Portugal. Miguel, his brother, sailed from Lisbon in May 1502, with three ships, to search for Gaspar and the missing vessel, but he was never heard of again, and it was conjectured that both of the brothers had been slain by the savages from whom they had taken so many of their relatives to serve as slaves in Portugal. No little enthusiasm was created at the court of Portugal by Cabral’s report of the discovery of the Land of the True Cross. King Emmanuel at once ordered three vessels to be equipped to sail to the new country. Having heard of the voyages made by Amerigo Vespucci to the Land of Pearls (Terra delle Perle), he wrote to Vespucci in Seville, and solicited him to enter his service. The illness of the explorer did not then permit him to accept the tempting offer of the king of Portugal. However, when he was afterward visited by the king’s ambassador, Giuliano di Bartolomeo del Giocondo, Vespucci consented to go to Lisbon and to be commissioned by King Emmanuel to accompany the fleet that was prepared to sail to Terra de Vera Cruz. His departure from Spain, he says, was a matter of regret to all who knew him, because there he was honored, and there the king had a right to claim his services.[279] Narrating the incidents of his third voyage to the New World, Vespucci writes: “We departed from the port of Lisbon, three ships in company, on the tenth of May, 1501, and took our course directly for the Grand Canary Islands.... From there we sailed to the coast of Ethiopia, and arrived at the port called Beseneghe, in the torrid zone.... We left this port of Ethiopia and steered to the southwest.... In sixty-seven days we reached land lying seven hundred leagues southwest of that port.... The season was very unfavorable for the voyage, particularly when we approached the equator, where, in the month of June, it is winter.... It pleased God, however, to show us a new country on the seventeenth of August. Then we anchored at the distance of a half league from the coast. We got out our boats and went on land to see if the country were inhabited, and if it were, by what class of people. We found that it was inhabited by a people of a lower condition than that of beasts.... We took possession of it in the name of his majesty. It lies five degrees south of the equator.... We sailed in a southeasterly direction, on a line parallel with the coast, making many landings, but never discovering any natives who could converse with us. Running on this course, we found the land made a turn to the southwest. As soon as we doubled the cape, which we named the Cape of St. Augustine, we began to sail to the southwest.... This cape is eight degrees south of the equator.”[280]