Portuguese colonizer, plantation owner, merchant, sertanista and navigator born in Ribatejo, known for having written Tractate Descriptive of Brazil (1587), a treaty that constitutes one of the first and most extraordinary accounts of colonial Brazil, which contain important geographic, botanical, ethnographic and linguistic data, and published posthumously by Varnhagen (1879), in Lisbon.
Member of the naval expedition of Francisco Barreto, who had left for Africa, but ended up arriving in Brazil. Established in Bahia (1569), he set up the Jaguaripe mill. He returned to Portugal (1584) to obtain from the court the privilege of exploring minerals and precious stones along the São Francisco River.
While awaiting royal permission he wrote his famous treatise, divided into two parts: General script and Memorial das grandeur of Bahia, describing information on geography, Indian customs, agriculture, animals and plants Brazilians.
Appointed governor and captain-major of the conquest of Minas, he returned to Brazil with 360 colonists, four Carmelite nuns and the governor-general of Brazil, D. Francisco de Sousa. Arriving in Bahia, he undertook an expedition that covered more than a hundred leagues along the São Francisco River, but he died of a fever in the middle of the sertão, after reaching the sources of the Paraguaçu River.
Source: Biographies - Academic Unit of Civil Engineering / UFCG
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Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
COSTA, Keilla Renata. "Gabriel Soares de Sousa"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/biografia/gabriel-soares.htm. Accessed on June 28, 2021.