The first pilgrim after the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 who has left a fairly complete account of the Holy Land was the Anglo-Saxon, Saewulf,[513] a traveler who visited Palestine in 1102 and 1103, combining trading enterprise with religious zeal. From the middle of the century the journeys of John of Würzburg,[514] of his follower Theoderic,[515] as well as of the Icelandic abbot, Nikulás Bergsson[516] of Thverá, deserve mention because in these records we find a personal touch that distinguishes them from the majority of similar narratives. The latter as a rule show that the pilgrims, like the medieval men of learning, suffered from that tendency, so characteristic of their age, to copy slavishly what others had said rather than to rely on their own powers of observation. This is particularly well illustrated by the majority of pilgrim records dating from after the early years of the twelfth century, when, as Beazley puts it, a decline had set in, “hastened by the compilation of standard guidebooks, which may be faintly described as legendary and inaccurate, and from which the later pilgrim narratives blindly copy, to the ever growing exclusion of anything independent or scholarly. Two of these handbooks, known as the _Old_ and the _New Compendium_, are the source of most of the tracts on the Holy Road which have been left us, under various names, from the time of the Second Crusade to the close of the Middle Ages.”[517] To this dry, guidebook type belong the narrative ascribed to Fetellus, archdeacon of Antioch,[518] and a series of anonymous accounts of pilgrimages dating from the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Though several of these contain more or less original matter, the desiccating influence of the _Old Compendium_ is nearly everywhere apparent.[519] Besides the pilgrims other travelers were on the road, and the records of their travels have in some cases come down to us. The journeys of Giraldus Cambrensis through Wales and Ireland will be discussed in the next section, on topographical works. Narratives of travel are also occasionally to be found in historical works and chronicles, poems, and letters. LETTERS OF TRAVEL