(with a view to native houses), the various kinds of pines, palms, and chestnuts, and their uses, the immense downfall of water carried to the sea by the rivers—­all this he noted with admiration; but industrial interest outweighed the aesthetic, even when he called Spain happier than Italy.  There is no trace of any real feeling for scenery, any grasp of landscape as a whole; he did not advance beyond scattered details, which attracted his eye chiefly for their material uses.

But there is real delight in Nature in the account of a journey to the Cape Verde Islands, undertaken on the suggestion of Henry the Navigator by Aloise da Mosto,[4] an intelligent Venetian nobleman: 

Cape de Verde is so called because the Portuguese, who had discovered it about a year before, found it covered with trees, which continue green all the year round.  This is a high and beautiful Cape, which runs a good length into the sea, and has two hills or little mountains at the point thereof.  There are several villages of negroes from Senega, on and about the promontory, who dwell in thatched houses close to the shore, and in sight of those who sail by....  The coast is all low and full of fine large trees, which are constantly green; that is, they never wither as those in Europe do, for the new leaves grow before the old ones fall off.  These trees are so near the shore that they seem to drink out of the sea.  It is a most beautiful coast to behold, and the author, who had sailed both in the East and West, never saw any comparable with it.

As Ruge says: 

    The delight of this solid and prudent citizen of Strasburg in the
    beauty of the tropics is lost in translation, but very evident in
    the original account.[5]

After reading it, we cannot quite say with Humboldt that Columbus was the very first to give fluent expression to Nature’s beauty on the shores of the New World; none the less, and apart from his importance in other respects, he remains the chief representative of his time in the matter.  Humboldt noted this in his critical examination of the history of geography in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in which he pointed out his deep feeling for Nature, and also, what only those who know the difficulties of language at the time can appreciate, the beauty and simplicity of his expression of it.[6]

Columbus is a striking example of the fact that a man’s openness to Nature increases with his general inner growth.  No one doubts that uneducated sailors, like other unlettered people, are vividly impressed by fine scenery, especially when it is new to them, if they possess a spark of mental refinement.  They have the feeling, but are unable to express it in words.  But, as Humboldt says, feeling improves speech; with increased culture, the power of expression increases.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Fernandez de Navarrete[7] for the Diary in which we can trace Columbus’ love for Nature increasing to ’a deep and poetic feeling for the majesty of creation.’