On the other hand, during our period there was not a little reasonably accurate observation of the phenomena of mountains. Bernard Sylvester, for example, pointed out that mountains are bad plowland largely because of the thinness of the soil on their steep slopes.[986] Gervase of Tilbury noted that many of the high hills of Wales, though they might have firm and rocky bases, were characterized by watery and boggy summits.[987] Giraldus Cambrensis pictures the characteristics of the Welsh hills and brings out their combination of crag and pasture land. In one passage he tells of Mount Ereri—called by the English “Snowdon,” or mount of snows—which has such an extent of pasture lands upon it that it could supply the flocks of the whole of Wales.[988] The land of Meiryonidd (Merioneth) he spoke of as a wild, rough region, with mountains so broken and irregular that it frequently took all day for the shepherds to gather together in one spot,[989] even though they might have been within earshot of one another in the morning. APPRECIATION OF THE BEAUTY OF MOUNTAINS It is not hard to believe that during our period some men had the beginnings of a genuinely esthetic appreciation of the beauty of mountains. Bernard Sylvester tells of the orographic systems of the world in terms not lacking in color and poetic appreciation.[990] He writes that the world is strung with mountains like nerves in a body and goes on to enumerate and describe them: “Clear Olympus, which looks down on the clouds; Parnassus, with double yoke; Lebanon, in its woods;” Sinai, Athos, Eryx, Pindus, Othrys, Pelion, Caucasus. Though he merely repeats classical names and classical designations, the whole long passage could hardly have been written by a man wholly blind to the grandeur of his subject. Giraldus Cambrensis tells about the Church of St. David, now known as Llanthoni Abbey, in the midst of the hills of southern Wales. “Here the monks, when they sit down in their cloister to rest and take the air, see in all directions over the high gables of their roofs the peaks of the mountains bounding their horizon and, as it were, touching the sky. They see the wild deer pasturing on their summits, and at about the hour of the prime or shortly before in clear weather they see the sun appearing over the mountain crests.”[991] This certainly shows that the writer found delight in the restful qualities of a highland landscape.