ace Columbus' love for Nature increasing to 'a deep
and poetic feeling for the majesty of creation.'

He wrote, October 8th, 1492, in his diary:

'Thanks be to God,' says the Admiral, 'the air is very soft like
the April at Seville, and it is a pleasure to be there, so balmy
are the breezes.'

And Humboldt says:

The physiognomy and forms of the vegetation, the impenetrable
thickets of the forests, in which one can scarcely distinguish
the stems to which the several blossoms and leaves belong, the
wild luxuriance of the flowering soil along the humid shores, and
the rose-coloured flamingoes which, fishing at early morning at
the mouth of the rivers, impart animation to the scenery,--all in
turn arrested the attention of the old mariner as he sailed along
the shores of Cuba, between the small Lucayan Islands and the
Jardinillos.

Each new country seemed to him more beautiful than the last; he
complained that he could not find new words in which to give the
Queen an impression of the beauty of the Cuban coast.

It will repay us to examine the Diary more closely, since Humboldt
only treated it shortly and in scattered extracts, and it has been
partly falsified, unintentionally, by attempts to modernize the
language instead of adhering to literal translation. What Peschel
says, for instance, is pretty but distinctly exaggerated:

Columbus was never weary of listening to the nightingales,
comparing the genial Indian climate with the Andalusian spring,
and admiring the luxuriant wilderness on these humid shores, with
their dense vegetation and forests so rich in all kinds of
plants, and alive with swarms of parrots ... with an open eye for
all the beauties of Nature and all the wonders of creation, he
looked at the splendour of the tropics very much as a tender
father looks into the bright eyes of his child.[8]

The Diary of November 3rd says:

He could see nothing, owing to the dense foliage of the trees,
which were very fresh and odoriferous; so that he felt no doubt
that there were aromatic herbs among them. He said that all he
saw was so beautiful that his eyes could never tire of gazing
upon such loveliness, nor his ears of listening to the songs of
birds.

November 14th:

He saw so many islands that he could not count them all, with
very high land covered with trees of many kinds and an infinite