The Spaniards and the Portuguese came to the New World with the means to reproduce their societies and their landscapes. On his second voyage to the Caribbean in 1493, for example, Columbus brought 1,500 men in 17 ships to settle in Española. He also brought seeds to grow wheat, as well as vegetables, fruit trees and grape vines, horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. Over the following decades, as the Spaniards spread across the islands of the Caribbean Sea and into the mainland, they took with them their companion species – their “portmanteau biota,” as Alfred Crosby has called them. Even when their aim was purely military, the conquistadores traveled with at least horses and war dogs; but when they settled they made every effort to grow the plants and raise the animals so necessary for a proper (Mediterranean) diet: wheat for bread; olive trees and grapes for oil and wine; sheep and cattle for meat, milk, and cheese, wool for warm clothing, and leather for saddles and bags; and so forth. And they grew sugar cane, with a view to producing sugar for export to Europe. The Portuguese, intent at first on trade and later settlement, followed closely with sugar and slaves, cattle and horses, and planted their engenhos on the eastern coasts of South America. In the process of developing the specialized ecosystems that maintained these plants and animals, the Spanish and the Portuguese transformed not only the ways in which the land was used and hence the landscapes, but the physical environment itself. The invaders were successful, Crosby suggests, where their portmanteau biota thrived and transformed the indigenous worlds.