and Asian continents) on the African coast, at Bezeguiche (the bay of Dakar, Senegal), listening the accounts of its sailors (then returning to Portugal), were the most decisive for his "New World" hypothesis. Vespucci suggested that the newly discovered lands (especially what is today South America/Brazil) were not the Indies but a "New World", the Mundus novus, Latin title of a contemporary document based on Vespucci letters to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, which had become widely popular in Europe. Around 1508 or 1511–1512, Portuguese captains reached and explored the River Plate estuary in the present-day Uruguay and Argentina, and went as far south as the present-day Gulf of San Matias at 42°S (recorded in the Newen Zeytung auss Pressilandt meaning "New Tidings from the Land of Brazil"). Some historians have attributed this voyage to Coelho and Vespucci years before, but a good part of historians and researchers, through the sparse and comparative documentation, identify the captains and the experienced pilot of the India run ("the best Pilot of Portugal" and a "best friend" of the Fugger's Agent), with Diogo Ribeiro, Estevão Frois and the pilot João de Lisboa. The explorers also reported that after going by the 40th parallel to south, along the coast, they found a "land" or "point extending into the sea", and further south, a Gulf. This and the following expeditions of Cristóvão Jacques to the River Plate and into the Parana River in 1521; and of Martim Afonso de Sousa and his brother Pero Lopes de Sousa, in 1530–1532, from the Amazon river, to Lagoa dos Patos and to the rivers Plate and Paraná, reinforced and demonstrated Portuguese interest in the River Plate. Permanent habitation in Brazil did not begin until São Vicente was founded in 1532 by Martim Afonso de Sousa, although temporary trading posts were established earlier to collect brazilwood, used as a dye. São Vicente, by its democratic municipal prerogatives (in the tradition of Portuguese municipalism since the Middle Ages) and by the general elections to its first Câmara (City Council) on August 22, 1532, is symbolically considered the birthplace of democracy in the Americas. From 1534 to 1536, 15 Captaincy colonies were created in Portuguese America. The captaincies were autonomous, and mostly private, colonies of the Portuguese Empire, each owned and run by a Captain-major. In 1549, due to their failure and limited success, the Captaincy Colonies of Brazil were united