Clothed with a beautiful verdure, covered with tall trees, abounding with plenty of excellent water ... and so healthy that the inhabitants make no use of medicines, for almost all who die here are not cut off by any distemper, but worn out by age.  Here are many large rivers, besides a vast number of delightful springs.  The plains are large and spacious, and afford excellent pasture....  In short, the whole country affords a most beautiful prospect, being diversified with hills and valleys, and these covered with thick shady woods stocked with great variety of trees, many of which our people were quite strangers to:  of these there was one of a particular nature, the leaves of which, when cut, sent forth a kind of balsam.  The trees used in dyeing scarlet grow here in great plenty and to a great height.  The soil likewise produces the most useful plants.

Of Ormuz, near Arabia: 

The name of the island seems to be taken from the ancient city of Armuza in Caramania ... the place is sandy and barren, and the soil so very poor that it produces nothing fit for human sustenance, neither by nature nor by the most laborious cultivation ... yet here you might see greater plenty of these, as well as all luxurious superfluities, than in most other countries of a richer and more fertile soil, for the place, poor in itself, having become the great mart for the commodities of India, Persia, and Arabia, was thus abundantly stocked with the produce of all these countries.

Peter Martyr’s[3] point of view was much the same.  He was full of surprise at the splendour round him, and the advantages such fertility offered to husbandry: 

    Thus after a few days with cheerful hearts they espied the land
    long looked for....

    As they coasted along by the shore of certain of these islands,
    they heard nightingales sing in the thick woods in the month of
    November.

They found also great rivers of fresh water and natural havens of capacity to harbour great navies of ships....  They found there wild geese, turtle-doves, and ducks, much greater than ours, and as white as swans, with heads of purple colour.  Also popinjays, of the which some are green, some yellow, and having their feathers intermingled with green, yellow, and purple, which varieties delighted the sense not a little....  They entered into a main large sea, having in it innumerable islands, marvellously differing one from another; for some of them were very fruitful, full of herbs and trees, other some very dry, barren, and rough, with high rocky mountains of stone, whereof some were of bright blue, or azurine colour, and other glistening white.

He filled a whole page with descriptions of the wonderful wealth of flowers, fruit, and vegetables of all kinds, which the ground yields even in February.  The richness of the prairie grass, the charm of the rivers, the wealth of fruit, the enormous size of the trees