Dreesbach has clearly pointed out[1084] that the passages from the French literature of the Crusading period which describe the Orient show that the things which impressed themselves on the minds of historian and chronicler and poet were the richness of gardens and orchards and the fertility of the fields. Her fecundity, not her romantic or esthetic qualities, made the average man of the Middle Ages love nature; and a country not rich and prosperous hardly deserved any particular notice, in his way of thinking. The descriptions of Syria in William of Tyre’s history reveal a great number of observations like the following: “The plain of Antioch, full of many rich fields for the raising of wheat and abounding in springs and rivulets,”[1085] or the neighborhood of Damascus, “where there are a great number of trees bearing fruits of all kinds and growing up to the very walls of the city and where everybody has a garden of his own.”[1086] Elsewhere William of Tyre emphasizes the contrast between the sterility of the desert and the marvelous fertility of Egypt, with its abundance of wheat.[1087] The same interest in the economic qualities of the land appears in the few local descriptions that we find in the writings of Otto of Freising. Otto speaks[1088] of the forested region about the Rhine, near Worms, as being “rich in produce and wine, abundant in hunting and fishing,” and for this reason, he adds, the region was pleasing to the princes who came from across the Alps to take part in the Diet at Worms. In detailing the life of Corbianus, founder of the church at Freising, he gives us a topographical account of the vicinity of this city.[1089] A hill, he says, situated in a most beautiful and delicious spot, overlooks like a watchtower the whole region, through which can be seen the swift stream of the Isar. In the days of Corbianus (about 745 A. D.) this territory was said to have been covered with woods and was a haunt of game; traces of these woods were still to be found in the ancient tree trunks among the thickets of the plains, and to Otto’s own day immense quantities of deer and goats ran wild there. In the northern part of the district by no means inconsiderable tracts of woodland, commonly called “the forest,” were still in existence, and from them much useful building material and fuel could be procured. The land contiguous to the hill was inclosed by the rivers Isar on the south and Amper on the north, and between the two streams it extended four German miles in the form of a very fertile peninsula. At the end of this, where the two rivers come together, was a place called Moosburg, beautiful and delightful, the site of a congregation of clergy connected with the church of the blessed Castulus. GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS’ EYE FOR LOCAL TOPOGRAPHY