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 (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 æsthetic, 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: