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 instance, knew of the sudden appearance of a hot spring in the Lake of Thun, and Gregory of Tours notes that the land-slip in 563 at the foot of the Dent du Midi, above the point where the Rhine enters the Lake of Geneva, was a dreadful event.  Not only was the Castle of Tauretunum overwhelmed, but the blocking of the Rhine caused a deluge felt as far as Geneva.  The pious prince of the Church explained this as a portent of another catastrophe, the pest, which ravaged Gaul soon after.