vines and flower gardens and pleasant spots.'

It must be admitted then, that, beside utilitarian admiration of a
Paradise of fruitfulness, there is some record of simple, even
enthusiastic delight in its beauty; but only as to its general
features, and in the most meagre terms. The country was more
interesting to the Crusaders as the scene of the Christian story than
as a place in which to rest and dream and admire Nature for her own
sake.

The accounts of German pilgrimages[3] of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries only contain dry notices, such as those of Jacob von Bern
(1346-47), Pfintzing (1436-40), and Ulrich Leman (1472-80). The
last-mentioned praises Damascus in this clumsy fashion: 'The town is
very gay, quite surrounded by orchards, with many brooks and springs
flowing inside and out, and an inexpressible number of people in it,'
etc. Dietrich von Schachten describes Venice in this way: 'Venice
lies in the sea, and is built neither on land nor on mountain, but on
wooden piles, which is unbelievable to one who has not seen it'; and
Candia: 'Candia is a beautiful town in the sea, well built; also a
very fruitful island, with all sorts of things that men need for
living.' He describes a ride through Southern Italy: 'Saturday we
rode from Trepalda, but the same day through chestnut and hazel
woods; were told that these woods paid the king 16,000 gulden every
year. After that we rode a German mile through a wood, where each
tree had its vine--many trees carried 3 ohms of wine, which is
pleasant to see--and came to Nola.'

He called Naples 'very pretty and big,' and on: 'Then the king took
us to the sea and shewed us the ports, which are pretty and strong
with bulwarks and gates; we saw many beautiful ships too,' etc. One
does not know which is the more wonderful here, the poverty of the
description or the utter lack of personal observation: what the wood
produced, and how one was protected from the sea, was more important
to the writer than wood and sea themselves, and this, even in
speaking of the Bay of Naples, perhaps the most beautiful spot in
Europe. But instances like these are typical of German descriptions
at the time, and their Alpine travels fared no better.[4]

Geographical knowledge of the Alps advanced very slowly; there was as
yet no aesthetic enjoyment of their beauty. The Frankish historians
(Gregory of Tours, Fredegar) chronicled special events in the Alps,
but very briefly. Fredegar, for