Columbus praises Ayiti’s cool fields and says it belongs to the Sovereigns

… This king and all the others went naked as their mothers bore them, and the women likewise, without any shame, and they are the most handsome men and women they had found up to then: quite white, so that if they went clothed and kept themselves from the sun and the air, they would be almost as white as in Spain, because this land is quite cool and the best that tongue can tell: it is very high, and on the greatest mountain oxen could plow, and it is all made in fields and valleys. In all Castile there is no land that can be compared to it in beauty and goodness. All this island and that of Tortuga are all tilled like the countryside of Córdoba. They have sown in them ajes, which are some small cuttings that they plant, and at their foot grow some roots like carrots, which serve for bread, and they grate and knead and make bread of them, and afterward they plant the same cutting again in another place and it again gives four or five of those roots, which are very tasty, the very taste of chestnuts. …