Brazilian literature - Cristo Raul

4
BRAZILIAN LITERATURE
of youth, and as the "island of Breasal" or "Hy-Brea-
sail." It is supposed that some of the early discoverers,
imagining that they had come upon the island Eden,
named it Brazil in much the same way that Columbus
named the Indies, considering his quest for India at last
successful.
However this may be, the first name officially given to
Brazil was The Land of the True (or Holy) Cross; only
later did the name Brazil, said to have been bestowed
by King Emanuel of Portugal, replace the pious title.
There is something symbolic in the change ; brazil ^ is
the name of the reddish dyewood which became so im-
portant commercially that it caused naval combats and
Portuguese-French rivalry, leading to the effective occu-
pation of the land by the Portuguese. The beam of the
cross yielded to a humbler wood as the national designa-
tion, just as the pious pretensions of the early colonizers
quickly vanished before their impious greed.
The early reports of the newly discovered land lived
up to the paradisical visions that had partly inspired the
quest. Truly here was a land of promise, a terrestrial
paradise that made men dip their pens in milk and
honey when they wrote of its wonders. Vaz de Ca-
minha, in what has been called the nation's "baptismal
certificate," grew rhapsodical in vain; Vespucci,—he for
whom the American continent was named,—actually
termed it an earthly paradise, but the Portuguese were
slow to value the new possession; the cross was not a
cross of gold. Nobrega, in 1549, exaggerated the extent
of the new discovery even as others were to exaggerate
the variety and magic of its fauna and flora; he consid-
2 Cf. Spanish and Portuguese brasa, a live coal.
Also, English brazier.