While the explorers were sailing along the east coast of Brazil, they arrived at a place where they anchored five days. “Here,” says Vespucci, “we found carmine stems very large and green, and some already dry on the tops of the trees. We left this port, always sailing to the southwest in sight of the land, making many anchorages and treating with innumerable people. We went so far toward the south that we were beyond the tropic of Capricorn where the south pole is elevated thirty-two degrees above the horizon. We had entirely lost sight of the Little Bear, and the Great Bear was very low, almost on the verge of the horizon.[281] We steered by the stars of the south pole, which are many, and much larger and brighter than those of our pole. I traced the figures of the greater part of them, particularly those of the first and greater magnitude, giving an explanation of the circuits which they made around the pole, together with a description of their diameters and semi-diameters, as may be seen in my four journeys. We ran about seven hundred and fifty leagues along this coast.... We saw a great number of redwood (verzino) and cassia trees, and of those which produce myrrh.... We found ourselves in such a high southern latitude, that the south pole was elevated above the horizon fifty-two degrees.... The cold [on the seventh of April, 1502] was so severe that no one in the fleet could endure it.... We agreed that the superior captain[282] should make signals for the fleet to turn about, and that we should depart from this land and steer our course in the direction of Portugal.” After touching at the port of Sierra Leone, and at the Azores, the explorers reached the port of Lisbon on the seventh day of September, 1502.[283] Vespucci was again sent by the king of Portugal, in 1503, with a fleet of six ships commanded by Gonçalo Coelho, to discover an island “toward the east called Melaccha, which we know lies in the sea,” says Vespucci, “thirty-three degrees from the south pole.” Departing from the port of Lisbon on the tenth of May, the vessels stood for the Cape Verd Islands. After going to Sierra Leone on the coast of Africa, the fleet sailed toward the southwest. On this course one of the vessels struck on a rock, and was abandoned by the crew. On the east coast of Brazil, the fleet entered the harbor which the Portuguese called the Bay of All Saints (Bahia de todos os Santos). At a harbor two hundred and sixty leagues farther south, or in eighteen degrees south latitude, a fortress was erected, and garrisoned with twenty-four men. The fleet then sailed for Portugal, and entered the port of Lisbon on the eighteenth of June, 1504.[284]