Reaching the harbour of Bastimentos, I put in....  The storm and a rapid current kept me in for fourteen days, when I again set sail, but not with favourable weather....  I had already made four leagues when the storm recommenced and wearied me to such a degree that I absolutely knew not what to do; my wound re-opened, and for nine days my life was despaired of.  Never was the sea seen so high, so terrific, and so covered with foam; not only did the wind oppose our proceeding onward, but it also rendered it highly dangerous to run in for any headland, and kept me in that sea, which seemed to me a sea of blood, seething like a cauldron on a mighty fire.  Never did the sky look more fearful; during one day and one night it burned like a furnace, and emitted flashes in such fashion that each time I looked to see if my masts and my sails were not destroyed; these flashes came with such alarming fury that we all thought the ship must have been consumed.  All this time the waters from heaven never ceased, not to say that it rained, for it was like a repetition of the Deluge.  The men were at this time so crushed in spirit, that they longed for death as a deliverance from so many martyrdoms.  Twice already had the ships suffered loss in boats, anchors, and rigging, and were now lying bare without sails.

These extracts shew how feeling for Nature in unlettered minds could develop into an enthusiasm which begot to some extent its own power of expression.  Columbus was entirely deficient in all previous knowledge of natural history; but he was gifted with deep feeling (the account of the nocturnal visions in the Lettera Rarissima is proof of this)[9], mental energy, and a capacity for exact observation which many of the other explorers did not possess, and these faculties made up for what he lacked in education.

In Cuba alone, he distinguishes seven or eight different species of palm more beautiful and taller than the date tree; he informs his learned friend Anghiera that he has seen pines and palms wonderfully associated together in one and the same plain, and he even so acutely observed the vegetation around him, that he was the first to notice that there were pines in the mountains of Cibao, whose fruits are not fir cones but berries like the olives of the Axarafe de Sevilla.

     (Cosmos.)

Most of Vespucci’s narratives of travel, especially his letters to the Medici, only contain adventures and descriptions of manners and customs.  He lacked the originality and enthusiasm which gave the power of the wing to Columbus.