The lands there are
high, and in it there are very many ranges of hills and most lofty
mountains, incomparably beyond the Island of Cetrefrey (Teneriffe);
all most beautiful in a thousand shapes and all accessible, and full
of trees of a thousand kinds, so lofty that they seem to reach the
sky. And I am assured that they never lose their foliage, as may be
imagined, since I saw them as green and as beautiful as they are in
Spain in May, and some of them were in flower, some in fruit, some in
another stage, according to their kind. And the nightingale was
singing, and other birds of a thousand sorts, in the month of
November, round about the way I was going. There are palm trees of six
or eight species, wondrous to see for their beautiful variety; but so
are the other trees and fruits and plants therein. There are wonderful
pine groves and very large plains of verdure, and there is honey and
many kinds of birds and great diversity of fruits. There are many
mines of metals in the earth, and the population is of inestimable
number. Espanola is a marvel; the mountains and hills, and plains, and
fields, and the soil so beautiful and rich for planting and sowing,
for breeding cattle of all sorts, for building towns and villages.
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