I went on a weeks-long sailing expedition as a teenager and realized after my first couple days at sea that I could smell land from over the horizon. If we wer

I went on a weeks-long sailing expedition as a teenager and realized after my first couple days at sea that I could smell land from over the horizon. If we were passing downwind of a landmass I could smell it even if I couldn't see it! Both trees and regular dirt have a smell that carries for miles and miles and when you've been on a fiberglass boat with no trees and dirt for days the smell really, really, stands out. I imagine that ancient maritime explorers, at sea in the vast oceans for weeks not days, would have been able to smell remote forested and guano-covered islands for hundreds of miles.