Note 39 — Chapter V · EMPIRE OF BRAZIL.

Of the simultaneousness of these discoveries, Humboldt says:—‘The course of great events, like the results of natural phenomena, is ruled by eternal laws, with few of which we have any perfect knowledge. The fleet which Emanuel, King of Portugal, sent to India, under the command of Pedro Alvarez Cabral, on the course discovered by Gama, was unexpectedly driven on the coast of Brazil on the 22nd April, 1500. From the zeal which the Portuguese had manifested since the expedition of Diaz in 1487, to circumnavigate the Cape of Good Hope, a recurrence of fortuitous circumstances, similar to those exercised by oceanic currents on Cabral’s ships, could hardly fail to manifest itself. The African discoveries would thus probably have brought about that of America south of the Equator; and thus Robertson was justified in saying that it was decreed in the destinies of mankind that the new continents should be made known to European navigators before the close of the fifteenth century.’