The news reached Portugal in the fall of 1500, and no time was lost in sending out a small fleet to ascertain definitely the extent, value, and resources of the region. The Portuguese hoped to find a wealthy and civilised population like that of India--rich and unwarlike nations, such as the Spaniards did encounter a few years later in Peru and Mexico. The exploring expedition was under the command of Amerigo Vespucci, the greatest technical navigator of the age. He shaped his course so as to keep to the windward and south of the redoubtable promontory of St. Roque, which the clumsy ships of that day could not weather in the teeth of the trade-winds and the equatorial current, and, turning to the south, made a systematic examination of the coast nearly as far as the river Plate, employing five months in the task. In naming the rivers, capes and harbours, he saved his inventive faculty and gratified the popular religious sentiment by calling each one by the name of the saint on whose anniversary it was reached. Most of these names have survived. For example, the Sao Francisco, the largest river between the Amazon and the Plate, is so called because Vespucci reached it on October 1, 1501, which date is sacred to St. Francis in the Roman calendar. Rio de Janeiro is so named because he saw the great bay, whose entrance is narrower than many rivers, on New Year's Day, 1501. He coasted along for two thousand miles, looking eagerly for gold, silver, spices, and civilised inhabitants. He was disappointed. The only thing found which seemed to have an immediate market value was brazil-wood--a dye-wood that had been used in Europe for centuries and was in great demand. Its colour was a bright red--hence its name, which means "wood the colour of fire." It was found in such abundance that the world's supply has since been drawn from this coast, and among sailors and merchants the country soon became known as "the Country of Brazil-wood." The name almost immediately supplanted "Santa Cruz." Vespucci saw that the country was fertile and the climate pleasant. This was not enough to satisfy his greedy employers. A government whose coffers were beginning to overflow with the profits of the Indian spice-trade and the African mines was not inclined to pay much attention to a region without the precious metals, and inhabited only by naked savages. The reports of the abundance of brazil-wood, however, induced private adventurers to go and cut that valuable commodity. The government declared it a Portuguese monopoly, but the high price of the article made the trade so enormously profitable, that ships of other nationalities, especially French, could not be excluded.