To those who followed Columbus and Cortez, the New World truly seemed
incredible because of the natural endowments. The land often announced
itself with a heavy scent miles out into the ocean. Giovanni di
Verrazano in 1524 smelled the cedars of the East Coast a hundred leagues
out. The men of Henry Hudson's Half Moon were temporarily disarmed
by the fragrance of the New Jersey Shore, while ships running farther up
the coast occasionally swam through large beds of floating flowers.
Wherever they came inland they found a rich riot of color and sound, of
game and luxuriant vegetation. Had they been other than they were, they
might have written a new mythology here. As it was, they took
inventory. - Frederick Turner, Beyond Geography: The Western Spirit Against the Wilderness (Viking, 1980), 41.256; quoted by Matthew Fox, Original Blessing (Santa Fe: Bear & Co., 1983), p. 43. |