Examples

Montezuma's aviary. Detail from the map of Tenochtitlán printed with Hernán Cortés's second letter from the New World, published in 1524.

En tierra firme ay tan grandes arboles. From Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, De la natural hystoria de las Indias, Toleo, 1526. 

Christoforus Colon Oceane classis Prefectus. Christopher Columbus signs himself Admiral of the Ocean Fleet in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, Rome, 1493. 

Horti Medici Amstelodamensis Rariorum Plantarum Historia. Title page that sums the colonial enterprise. 1697.

Pineapple, maize, and chili peppers, three of the New World's gifts to the Old. Francisco Hernández, Rerum medicarum novae Hispaniae... Rome, 1646

Dutch map showing the fabled Lake Parime and the long-sought golden city of El Dorado (Amsterdam, 1630)

Cases used to transport living plants from South America to Spain.
Casimiro Ortega, Instrucción sobre el modo mas seguro y económico de transportar plantas vivas por mar y tierra de los paises mas distantes (Madrid, 1779)

Humboldt walks toward the volcano of Jorulla in central Mexico.

Alexander von Humboldt, Vues des cordillères et monuments des peoples indigènes de l'Amérique (Paris, 1810[-13])