Military man, captain-lieutenant of the bodyguard and Brazilian trailblazer born Vigia, Province of Grão Pará, known for bringing coffee to Brazil. A Brazilian official in the service of Portugal, he held the post of sergeant-major in Pará. He led an expedition to the Madeira River (1722) and reached the mouth of the Mamoré and followed its course until reaching the village of Santa Cruz de Cajajuvas, seat of a Jesuit mission in Peru.
In a new expedition (1727) he went up the Oiapoque to check the existence of border marks and continued his journey to Cayenne, in French Guiana, where he received clandestinely from the wife of French governor Claude d'Orvilliers, a handful of coffee seeds, the export of which was prohibited by France, and five more seedlings.
He brought them to Brazil and planted the first plantation on his land, in the municipality of Vigia, Pará, where he had more than a thousand trees. The cultivation of coffee had been introduced in Dutch Guiana (1714) and Jamaica (1718), expanding from then on to the tropical regions of South America. It is said that small shipments of coffee from northern Brazil (1731) began to arrive in Portugal and that three years later (1734) entered the port of Lisbon three thousand arrobas sent by the Companhia Geral do Maranhão and Grão-Pará, at a time when coffee consumption in Portugal was still small.
In the service of Portugal he was (1722) exploring the Madeira River, which was originally known as Caiari, his travel account being published by Capistrano de Abreu (1884). According to historians, he can be considered one of the great pioneers of the Amazon, helping to incorporate the crown and, consequently, to Brazil, a great extension of Amazonian territory, still virgin and not colonized. Like his birth date, his death date is estimated.
Source: http://www.dec.ufcg.edu.br/biografias/
Order F - Biography - Brazil School
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/biografia/francisco-melo-palheta.htm
