HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE No. 86 Editors: HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, Lrrr.D., LL.D., F.B.A. PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE 16mo cloth, 50 cents net, postpaid HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY Already Published THE DAWN OF HISTORY . . . By T. L. MYRES ROME By W. WARDE FOWLS* THE PAPACY AND MODERN TIMES By WILLIAM BARRY MEDIEVAL EUROPE By H. W. C. DAVIS THE FRENCH REVOLUTION . By HILAIRE BEI.LOC NAPOLEON By H. A. L. FISHER CANADA By A. G. BRADLEY THE COLONIAL PERIOD . . . By CHARLES M. ANDREWS THE WARS BETWEEN ENG- LAND AND AMERICA ... BY THEODORE C. SMITH FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN By WILLIAM MACDONALD THE CIVIL WAR By FREDERIC L. PAXSON RECONSTRUCTION AND UNION (1865-1912) By PAUL L. HAWORTH THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND . By A. F. POLLARD HISTORY OF OUR TIME (i885- ign) By G. P. GOOCH POLAR EXPLORATION (with map9)By W. S. BRUCE THE OPENING UP OF AFRICA By SIR H. H. JOHNSTON THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA By H. A. GILES PEOPLES AND PROBLEMS OF INDIA By SIR T. W. HOLDERNESS A SHORT HISTORY OF WAR AND PEACE ByG. H. FERRIS MODERN GEOGRAPHY .... By MARION NEWBIGIN MASTER MARINERS By T. R. SPEARS THE OCEAN By SIR JOHN MURRAY LATIN AMERICA By W. R. SHEPHERD GERMANY OF TO-DAY .... By CHAS. TOWER THE GROWTH OF EUROPE . . By G. A. J. COLE THE EXPLORATION OF THE ALPS By ARNOLD LUNN Future Issues A SHORT HISTORY OF EUROPE By HERBERT FISHER ANCIENT GREECE By GILBERT MURRAY A SHORT HISTORY OF RUSSIA By PAUL MILYOUKOV FRANCE OF TO-DAY By M. ALBERT THOMAS THE REFORMATION By PRINCIPAL LINDSAY ANCIENT EGYPT By F. L. GRIFFITH THE ANCIENT EAST By D. G. HOGARTH MODERN TURKEY By D. G. HOGARTH THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE . . By N. H. BAYNES THE EXPLORATION OF THE ALPS BY ARNOLD LUNN, M.A. AUTHOR OF "THE ENGLISHMAN IN THE ALPS NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY LONDON WILLIAMS AND NORGATE PREFACE FOR the early chapters of this book I have consulted, amongst other authorities, the books mentioned in the bibliography on pp. 251- 254. It would, however, be ungracious if I failed to acknowledge my indebtedness to that most readable of historians, Mr. Gribble, and to his books, The Early Mountaineers (Fisher Unwin) and The Story of Alpine Climbing (Nelson). Mr. Gribble and his pub- lisher, Mr. Unwin, have kindly allowed me to quote passages translated from the works of the pioneers. Two friends, experts in the practice and history of mountaineering, have read the proofs and helped me with numerous suggestions. CONTENTS CHAP. PAOT I THE MEDIAEVAL ATTITUDE ... 9 II THE PIONEERS. . . ... 22 III THE OPENING UP OF THE ALPS . 44 IV THE STORY OF MONT BLANC . 60 V MONTE ROSA AND THE BUNDNER OBER- LAND ...... 82 VI TIROL AND THE OBERLAND . . 92 VII THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH . .111 VIII THE STORY OF THE MATTERHORN . 147 IX MODERN MOUNTAINEERING . . . 185 X THE ALPS IN LITERATURE . . 208 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..... 251 INDEX . . 254 vu THE ALPS CHAPTER I ROUSSEAU is usually credited with the dis- covery that mountains are not intrinsically hideous. Long before his day, isolated men had loved the mountains, but these men were eccentrics. They founded no school; and Rousseau was certainly the first to popularise mountains and to transform the cult of hill worship into a fashionable creed. None the less, we must guard against the error of sup- posing that mountain love was confined to the few men who have left behind them literary evidence of their good taste. Moun- tains have changed very little since man became articulate, and the retina of the human eye has changed even less. The beauty of outline that stirs us to-day was implicit in the hills " that shed their burial sheets about the march of Hannibal." It 9 10 THE ALPS seems reasonable to suppose that a few men in every age have derived a certain pleasure, if not from Alpine travel at least from the distant view of the snows. The literature of the Ancient World con- tains little that bears upon our subject. The literature of the Jews is exceptional in this respect. This is the more to their credit, as the mountains of Judaea, south of the beautiful Lebanon range, are shapeless and uninterest- ing. Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Job, and Isaiah contain mountain passages of great beauty. The Old Testament is, however, far richer in mountain praise than the New Testament. Christ retired more than once to the mountains; but the authors of the four Gospels content themselves with re- cording the bare fact that certain spiritual crises took place on mountain-tops. There is not a single indication in all the gospels that Nazareth is set on a hill overlooking one of the fairest mountain prospects in all Judaea, not a single tribute to the beauty of Galilee girdled by the outlying hills of Hermon. The Greeks lived in a land of mountains far lovelier than Palestine's characterless heights. But the Jews showed genuine if spasmodic appreciation for their native ranges, whereas the Greeks, if their literature does them justice, cared little or nothing for THE MEDIEVAL ATTITUDE 11 their mountains. The note of fear and dread, pleasantly rare in Jewish literature, is never long absent from Greek references to the mountains. Of course, the Greeks gave Olympus to their gods, but as Mr. Norman Young remarks in a very able essay on The Mountains in Greek Poetry, it was necessary that the gods should look down on man- kind; and, as they could not be strung up in mid-air, the obvious thing was to put them on a mountain-top. Perhaps we may con- cede that the Greeks paid a delicate compli- ment to Parnassus, the Home of the Muses; and certainly they chose for their temples the high ground of their cities. As one wanders through the olives and asphodels, one feels that the Greeks chose for their dwellings and temples those rising grounds which afforded the noblest prospect of the neighbouring hills. Only the cynic would contend that they did this in order to escape the atmosphere of the marshes. The Romans were disgustingly practical. They regarded the Alps as an inconvenient barrier to conquest and commerce. Virgil shows an occasional trace of a deeper feeling, and Horace paused between draughts of Falernian wine to admire the snows on Soracte, which lent contrast to the comfort of a well-ordered life. 12 THE ALPS Mr. Freshfield has shown that the Chinese had a more genuine feeling for mountains; and Mr. Weston has explained the ancient cult of high places among the Japanese, perhaps the most consistent mountain wor- shippers in the world. The Japanese pilgrims, clad in white, make the ascent to the shrines which are built on the summits of their sacred mountains, and then withdraw to a secluded spot for further worship. For centuries, they have paid official tribute to the inspiration of high places. But what of the Alps? Did the men who lived within sight of the Swiss mountains regard them with indifference and contempt ? This was, perhaps, the general attitude, but there is some evidence that a love for moun- tains was not quite so uncommon in the Middle Ages as is usually supposed. Before attempting to summarise this evi- dence, let us try to realise the Alps as they presented themselves to the first explorers. The difficulties of Alpine exploration, as that term is now understood, would have proved quite as formidable as those which now con- front the Himalayan explorer. In spite of this, glacier passes were crossed in the earliest times, and even the Romans seemed to have ventured across the Theodule, judging by the coins which have been found on the top THE MEDIAEVAL ATTITUDE 13 of that great glacier highway. In addition to the physical difficulties of Alpine travel, we must recognise the mental handicap of our ancestors. Danger no longer haunts the highways and road-passes of the Alps. Wild beasts and robber bands no longer threaten the visitor to Grindelwald. Of the numerous " inconveniences of travel " cited by an early visitor to the Alps, we need now only fear " the wonderful cunning of Innkeepers." Stilled are the voices that were once supposed to speak in the thunder and the avalanche. The dragons that used to wing their way across the ravines of the central chain have joined the Dodo and " the men that eat the flesh of serpents and hiss as serpents do." Danger, a luxury to the modern, formed part of the routine of mediaeval life. Our ancestors had no need to play at peril; and, lest we lightly assume that the modern mountaineer is a braver man than those who shuddered on the St. Bernard, let us remember that our ancestors accepted with grave composure a daily portion of inevitable risks. Modern life is so secure that we are forced to the Alps in search of contrast. . When our ancestors needed contrast, they joined a monastery. Must we assume that danger blinded them to the beauty of the Alps? The mountains themselves have not changed. The modern 14 THE ALPS mountaineer sees, from the windows of the Berne express, a picture whose colours have not faded in the march of Time. The bar of silver that thrusts itself above the distant foothills, as the train swings out of the wooded fortress of the Jura, casts the same challenge across the long shadows of the up- lands. The peaks are a little older, but the vision that lights the world for us shone with the same steadfast radiance across the plains of long ago. Must we believe that our adventurous forefathers could find nothing but fear in the snows of the great divide? Dangers which have not yet vanished menaced their journey, but the white gleam of the distant snows was no less beautiful in the days when it shone as a beacon light to guide the adventurous through the great barrier down the warmth of Italian lowlands. An age which could face the great adventure of the Crusades for an idea, or more often for the sheer lust of romantic wandering, was not an age easily daunted by peril and discomfort. May we not hope that many a mute, in- glorious moiuitain-lover lifted his eyes across the fields and rivers near Basle or Constance, and found some hint of elusive beauty in the vision that still remains a mystery, even for those who have explored the once trackless snows ? Those who have tried to discover the mediaeval attitude have too often merely generalised from detached expressions of horror. Passages of praise have been treated as exceptional. The Monk Bremble and the Bishop Berkeley have had their say, un- challenged by equally good evidence for the defence. Let us remember that plenty of modern travellers might show an equally pronounced distaste for mountains. For the defence, we might quote the words of an old traveller borrowed in Coryat's Crudities, a book which appeared in 1611 : " What, I pray you, is more pleasant, more delectable, and more acceptable unto a man than "to behold the height of hilles, as it were the very Atlantes of he.auen? to admire Hercules his pillers? to see the mountaines Taurus and Caucasus ? to view the hilLOlympus, the seat of Jupiter? to pass over the Alpes that were broken by Annibals Vinegar? to climb up the Appenine promontory of Italy? from the hill Ida to behold the rising of the Sunne before the Sunne appears? to visit Pernassus and Helicon, the most celebrated seates of the Muses ? Neither indeed is there any hill or hillocke, which doth not containc in it the most swcete memory of worthy matters." There is the genuine ring about this. It is 16 THE ALPS the modern spirit without the modern affec- tations. Nor is this case exceptional. In the following chapter we shall sketch the story of the early Alpine explorers, and we shall quote many passages instinct with the real love for the hills. Are we not entitled to believe that Gesner, Marti, and Petrarch are characteristic of one phase of mediaeval sentiment, just as Bremble is characteristic of another? There is abundant evidence to show that the habit of visiting and admiring mountain scenery had become fashionable before the close of the sixteenth century. Simler tells us that foreigners came from all lands to marvel at the mountains, and excuses a certain lack of interest among his compatriots on the ground that they are surfeited with a too close know- ledge of the Alps. Marti, of whom we shall speak at greater length, tells us that he found on the summit of the Stockhorn the Greek inscription cut in a stone which may be rendered : " The love of mountains is best." And then there is the evidence of art. Con- ventional criticism of mountain art often revolves in a circle : " The mediaeval man detested mountains, and when he painted a mountain he did so by w ly of contrast to set off the beauty of the plains." Or again : " Mediaeval man only painted mountains as THE MEDIAEVAL ATTITUDE 17 types of all that is terrible in Nature. There- fore, mediaeval man detested mountains." Let us try to approach the work of these early craftsmen with no preconceived notions as to their sentiments. The canvases still remain as they were painted. What do they teach us? It is not difficult to discriminate between those who used mountains to point a contrast, and those who lingered with devotion on the beauty of the hills. When we find a man painting mountains loosely and carelessly, we may assume that he was not over fond of his subject. Jan von Scorel's grotesque rocks show nothing but equally grotesque fear. Hans Altdorfer's elaborate and careful work proves that he was at least interested in mountains, and had cleared his mind of conventional terror. Roughly, we may say that, where the foreground shows good and the mountain background shows bad workmanship, the artist cared nothing for hills, and only threw them in by way of gloomy contrast. But such pictures are not the general rule. Let us take a very early mountain painting that dates from 1444. It is something of a shock to find the Saleve and Mont Blanc as the background to a New Testament scene. How is the background used ? Konrad Witz, the painter, has chosen for his theme the B 18 THE ALPS miraculous draught of fishes. If he had borrowed a mountain background for the Temptation, the Betrayal, the Agony, or the Crucifixion, we might contend that the moun- tains were introduced to accentuate the gloom. But there is no suggestion of fear or sorrow in the peaceful calm that followed the storm of Calvary. The mountains in the distance are the hills as we know them. There is no reason to think that they are intended as a contrast to the restful fore- ground. Rather, they seem to complete and round off the happy serenity of the picture. Let us consider the mountain work of a greater man than Witz. We may be thankful that Providence created this barrier of hills between the deep earnestness of the North and the tolerance of Italy, for to this we owe some of the best mountain-scapes of the Middle Ages. There is romance in the thought of Albrecht Diirer crossing the Brenner on his way to the Venetian lagoons that he loved so well. Did Diirer regard this journey with loathing? Were the great Alps no more than an obstacle on the road to the coast where the Adriatic breaks " in a warm bay 'mid green Illyrian hills." Did he echo the pious cry of that old Monk who could only pray to be delivered from " this place of torment," or did he rather linger THE MEDIAEVAL ATTITUDE 19 with loving memory on the wealth of in- spiring suggestion gathered in those ad- venturous journeys? Contrast is the essence of Art, and Diirer was too great a man to miss the rugged appeal of untamed cliffs, because he could fathom so easily the gentler charm of German fields and Italian waters. You will find in these mountain woodcuts the whole essence of the lovable German romance, that peculiar note of " snugness " due to the contrast of frowning rock and some " gemiit- lich" Black Forest chalet. Hans Andersen, though a Dane, caught this note; and hi Diirer's work there is the same appealing romance that makes the "Ice Maiden" the most lovable of Alpine stories. One can almost see Rudy marching gallantly up the long road in Diirer's " Das Grosse Gliick," or returning with the eaglets stolen from their perilous nest in the cliffs that shadow the " Heimsuch." Those who pretend that Diirer introduced mountains as a background of gloom have no sense for atmosphere nor for anything else. For Diirer, the mountains were the home of old romance. Turn from Diirer to Da Vinci, and you will find another note. Da Vinci was, as we shall see, a climber, and this gives the dominant note to his great study of storm and thunder among the peaks, to be seen at Windsor 20 THE ALPS Castle. His mountain rambles have given him that feeling of worship, tempered by awe, which even the Climbers' Guides have not banished. But this book is not a treatise on mountain Art a fascinating subject; and we must content ourselves with the statement that painters of all ages have found in the mountains the love which is more powerful than fear. Those who doubt this may examine at leisure the mountain work of Brueghel, Titian, or Mantegna. There are many other witnesses. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Hans Leu had looked upon the hills and found them good, and Altdorfer had shown not only a passionate enthusiasm for mountains, but a knowledge of their anatomy far ahead of his age. Wolf Huber, ten years his junior, carried on the torch, and passed it to Lautensack, who recaptured the peculiar note of German romance of which Diirer is the first and the greatest apostle. It would be easy to trace the apostolic succession to Segantini, and to prove that he is the heir to a tradition nearly six hundred years old. But enough has been said. We have adduced a few instances which bear upon the con- tention that, just as the mountains of the Middle Ages were much the same as the mountains of to-day, so also among the men of those times, as among 'the men of to-day, THE MEDIAEVAL ATTITUDE 21 there were those who hated and those who loved the heights. No doubt the lovers of mountain scenery were in the minority; but they existed in far larger numbers than is sometimes supposed. CHAPTER II THE PIONEERS WITHIN the compass of this book, we cannot narrate the history of Alpine passes, though the subject is intensely interesting, but we must not omit all mention of the great classic traverse of the Alps. We should read of Hannibal's memorable journey not in Livy, nor even in Bohn, but in that vigorous sixteenth-century translation which owes its charm and force even more to Philemon Holland the translator than to Livy. Livy, or rather Holland, begins with Hannibal's sentiments on " seeing near at hand the height of those hills . . . the horses singed with cold . . . the people with long shagd haire." Hannibal and his army were much depressed, but, none the less, they advanced under a fierce guerilla attack from the natives, who " slipt away at night, every one to his owne harbour." Then follows a fine description of the difficulties of the pass. The poor elephants " were ever readie and anone to run upon their noses " a phrase 22 THE PIONEERS 23 which evokes a tremendous picture " and the snow being once with the gate of so many people and beasts upon it fretted and thawe.d, they were fain to go upon the bare yce under- neeth and in the slabberie snow-broth as it relented and melted about their heeles." A great rock hindered the descent; Hannibal set it on fire and " powred thereon strong vinegar for to calcine and dissolve it," a device unknown to modern mountaineers. The passage ends with a delightful picture of the army's relief on reaching " the dales and lower grounds which have some little banks lying to the sunne, and rivers withall neere unto the woods, yea and places more meet and beseeming for men to inhabit." Experts are divided as to what pass was actually crossed by Hannibal. Even the Col de Geant has been suggested by a romantic critic; it is certainly stimulating to picture Hannibal's elephants in the G6ant ice-fall. Probably the Little St. Bernard, or the Mont Genevre, is the most plausible solution. So much for the great traverse. Some twenty-five glacier passes had been actually crossed before the close of the sixteenth century, a fact which bears out our contention that in Ihe Middle Ages a good deal more was known about the craft of mountaineering than is generally supposed. 24 THE ALPS There is, however, this distinctive difference between passes and peaks. A man may cross a pass because it is the most convenient route from one valley to another. He may cross it though he is thoroughly unhappy until he reaches his destination, and it would be just as plausible to argue from his journey a love of mountains as to deduce a passion for the sea in every sea-sick traveller across the Channel. But a man will not climb a mountain unless he derives some interest from the actual ascent. Passes may be crossed in the way of business. Mountains will only be climbed for the joy of the climb. The Roche Melon, near Susa, was the first Alpine peak of any consequence to be climbed. This mountain rises to a height of 11,600 feet. It was long believed to be the highest moun- tain in Savoy. On one side there is a small glacier ; but the climb can be effected without crossing snow. It was climbed during the Dark Ages by a knight, Rotario of Asti, who deposited a bronze tryptych on the summit where a chapel still remains. Once a year the tryptych is carried to the summit, and Mass is heard in the chapel. There is a description of an attempt on this peak in the Chronicle of Novalessa, which dates back to the first half of the eleventh century. King Romulus is said to have deposited treasure on 26 THE ALPS the mountain. The whole Alpine history of this peak is vague, but it is certain that the peak was climbed at a very early period, and that a chapel was erected on the summit be- fore Villamont's ascent in 1588. The climb presents no difficulties, but it was found dis- creet to remove the statue of the Virgin, as pilgrims seem to have lost their lives hi attempting to reach it. The pilgrimages did not cease even after the statue had been placed in Susa. Another early ascent must be recorded, though the climb was a very modest achieve- ment. Mont Ventoux, in Provence, is only some 6430 feet above the sea, and to-day there is an hotel on the summit. None the less, it deserves a niche in Alpine history, for its ascent is coupled with the great name of the poet Petrarch. Mr. Gribble calls Petrarch the first of the sentimental mountaineers. Certainly, he was one of the first mountaineers whose recorded sentiments are very much ahead of his age. The ascent took place on April 26, 1335, and Petrarch described it in a letter written to his confessor. He confesses that he cherished for years the ambition to ascend Mont Ventoux, and seized the first chance of a companion to carry through this undertaking. He makes the customary statement as to the extreme THE PIONEERS 27 difficulty of the ascent, and introduces a shepherd who warns him from the under- taking. There are some, very human touches in the story of the climb. While his brother was seeking short cuts, Petrarch tried to advance on more level ground, an excuse for his laziness which cost him dear, for the others had made considerable progress while he was still wandering in the gullies of the mountain. He began to find, like many modern mountaineers, that " human in- genuity was not a match for the nature of things, and that it was impossible to gain heights by moving downwards." He suc- cessfully completed the ascent, and the climb filled him with enthusiasm. The reader should study the fine translation of his letter by Mr. Reeve, quoted in The Early Moun- taineers. Petrarch caught the romance of heights. The spirit that breathes through every line of his letter is worthy of the poet. Petrarch is not the only great name that links the Renaissance to the birth of moun- taineering. That versatile genius, Leonardo da Vinci, carried his scientific explorations into the mountains. We have already men- tioned his great picture of storm and thunder among the hills, one of the few mementos that have survived from his Alpine journeys. His journey took place towards the end of 28 THE ALPS the fifteenth century. Little is known of it, though the following passage from his works has provoked much comment. The translation is due to Mrs. Bell : " And this may be seen, as I saw it, by any one going up Monboso, a peak of the Alps which divide France from Italy. The base of this moun- tain gives birth to the four rivers which flow in four different directions through the whole of Europe. And no mountain has its base at so great a height as this, which lifts itself above almost all the clouds; and snow seldom falls there, but only hail in the summer when the clouds are highest. And this hail lies (unmelted) there, so that, if it were not for the absorption of the rising and falling clouds, which does not happen more than twice in an age, an enormous mass of ice would be piled up there by the layers of hail ; and in the middle of July I found it very considerable, and I saw the sky above me quite dark; and the sun as it fell on the mountain was far brighter here than in the plains below, because a smaller extent of atmosphere lay between the summit of the mountain and the sun." We need not summarise the arguments that identify Monbosa either with Monte Rosa or Monte Viso. The weight of evidence inclines to the former alternative, though, of THE PIONEERS 29 course, nobody supposes that Da Vinci actually reached the summit of Monte Rosa. There is good ground, however, for believing that he explored the lower slopes; and it is just possible that he may have got as far as the rocks above the Col d'Ollen, Where, accord- ing to Mr. Freshfield, the inscription " A.T.M., 1615 " has been found cut into the crags at a height of 10,000 feet. In this connection it is interesting to note that the name " Mon- bosa " has been found in place of Monte Rosa in maps, as late as 1740. 1 We now come to the first undisputed ascent of a mountain, still considered a difficult rock climb. The year that saw the discovery of America is a great date in the history of mountaineering. In 1492, Charles VII of France passed through Dauphiny, and was much impressed by the appearance of Mont Aiguille, a rocky peak near Grenoble that was then called Mont Inaccessible. This mountain is only some seven thousand feet in height ; but it is a genuine rock climb, and is still considered difficult, so much so that the French Alpine Club have paid it the doubtful compliment of iron cables in the more sensational passages. Charles VII was struck by the appearance of the mountain, 1 See Mr. Gribble's Early Mountaineers, Chap. V., where the arguments on each side are skilfully summarised. 30 THE ALPS and ordered his Chamberlain de Beaupre" to make the ascent. Beaupre", by the aid of " subtle means and engines," scaled the peak, had Mass said on the top, and caused three crosses to be erected on the summit. It was a remarkable ascent, and was not repeated till 1834. We are not concerned with exploration beyond the Alps, and we have therefore omitted Peter Ill's attempt on Pic Canigou in the Pyrenees, and the attempt on the Pic du Midi in 1588; but we cannot on the ground of irrelevance pass over a remarkable ascent in 1521. Cortez is our authority. Under his order, a band of Spaniards ascended Popocatapetl, a Mexican volcano which reaches the respectable height of 17,850 feet. These daring climbers brought back quantities of sulphur which the army needed for its gunpowder. . ' The Stockhorn is a modest peak some seven thousand feet in height. Simler tells us that its ascent was a commonplace achieve- ment. Marti, as we have seen in the previous chapter, found numberless inscriptions cut into the summit stones by visitors, enthusi- astic , in their appreciation of mountain scenery, and its ascent by Miiller, a Berne professor, in 1536, is only remarkable for the joyous poem in hexameters which records his THE PIONEERS 31 delight in all the accompaniments of a moun- tain expedition. Miiller has the true feelings for the simpler pleasures of picnicing on the heights. Everything delights him, from the humble fare washed down with a draught from a mountain stream, to the primitive joy of hurling big rocks down a mountain side. The last confession endears him to all who have practised this simple, if dangerous, amusement. The early history of Pilatus, another low- lying mountain, is much more eventful than the annals of the Stockhorn. It is closely bound up with the Pilate legend, which was firmly believed till a Lucerne pastor gave it the final quietus in 1585. Pontius Pilate, according to this story, was condemned by the Emperor Tiberilis, who decreed that he should be put to death in the most shameful possible manner. Hearing this, Pilate very sensibly committed suicide. Tiberius con- cealed his chagrin, and philosophically re- marked that a man whose own hand had not spared him had most certainly died the most shameful of deaths. Pilate's body was at- tached to a stone and flung into the Tiber, where it caused a succession of terrible storms. The Romans decided to remove it, and the body was conveyed to Vienne as a mark of contempt for the people of that 32 THE ALPS place. It was flung into the Rhone, and did its best to maintain its reputation. We need not follow this troublesome corpse through its subsequent wanderings. It was finally hurled into a little marshy lake, near the summit of Pilatus. Here Pilate's behaviour was tolerable enough, though he resented indiscriminate stone-throwing into the lake by evoking terrible storms, and once a year he escaped from the waters, and sat clothed in a scarlet robe on a rock near by. Anybody luckless enough to see him on these occasions died within the twelve-month. So much for the story, which was firmly believed by the good citizens of Lucerne. Access to the lake was forbidden, unless the visitor was accompanied by a respectable burgher, pledged to veto any practices that Pilate might construe as a slight. In 1307, six clergymen were imprisoned for having attempted an ascent without observing the local regulations. It is even, said that climbers were occasionally put to death for breaking these stringent by-laws. None the less, ascents occasionally took place. Duke Ulrich of Wurtemburg climbed the mountain in 1518, and a professor of Vienna, by name Joachim von Watt, ascended the mountain in order to investigate the legend, which he seems to have believed after a show of doulbt. Finally, THE PIONEERS 33 in 1585, Pastor John Miiller of Lucerne, accompanied by a few courageous sceptics, visited the lake. In their presence, he threw stones into the haunted lake, and shouted " Pilate wirf aus dein Kath." As his taunts produced no effect, judgment was given by default, and the legend, which had sent earlier sceptics into gaol, was laughed out of existence. Thirty years before this defiant demonstra- tion, the mountain had been ascended by the most remarkable of the early mountaineers. Conrad Gesner was a professor at the ancient University of Zurich. Though not the first to make climbing a regular practice, he was the pioneer of mountain literature. He never encountered serious difficulties. His moun- taineering was confined to those lower heights which provide the modern with a training walk. But he ha*d the authentic outlook of the mountaineer. His love for mountains was 4 more genuine than that of many a modern wielder of the ice-axe and rope. A letter has been preserved, in which he records his resolution " to climb mountains, or at all events to climb one mountain every year." We have no detailed record of his climbs, but luckily his account of an ascent of Pilatus still survives, a most sincere tribute to the simple pleasures of the heights. It is a 34 THE ALPS relief to turn to it after wading through more recent Alpine literature. Gesner's writing is subjective. It records the impress of simple emotions on an unsophisticated mind. He finds a naive joy in all the elemental things that make up a mountain walk, the cool breezes plying on heated limbs, the sun's genial warmth, the contrasts of outline, colour, and height, the unending variety, so that " in one day you wander through the four seasons of the year, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter." He explains -that every sense is delighted, the sense of hearing is gratified by the witty conversation of friends, " by the songs of the birds, and even by the stillness of the waste." He adds, in a very modern note, that the mountaineer is freed from the noisy tumult of the city, and that in the " profound abiding silence one catches echoes of the harmony of celestial spheres." There is more in the same key. He anticipates the most 'enduring reward of the mountaineer, and his words might serve as the motto for a mountain book of to-day : " Jucundum erit postea meminisse laborum atque periculorum, juvabit hsec animo revolvere et narrare amicis." Toil and danger are sweet to recall, every mountaineer loves " to revolve these in his mind and to tell them to his friends." Moreover, contrast is the essence of our enjoy- THE PIONEERS 85 merit and " the very delight of rest is in- tensified when it follows hard labour." And then Gesner turns with a burst of scorn to his imaginary opponent. " But, say you, we lack feather beds and mattresses and pillows. Oh, frail and effeminate man ! Hay shall take the place of these luxuries. It is soft, it is fragrant. It is blended from healthy grass and flower, and as you sleep respiration will be sweeter and healthier*than ever. Your pillow shall be of hay. Your mattress shall be of hay. A blanket of hay shall be thrown across your body." That is the kind of thing an enthusiastic mountaineer might have written about the club-huts in the old days before the hay gave place to mattresses. Nor does Gesner spoil his rhapsody by the in- evitable joke about certain denizens of the hay. There follows an eloquent description of the ascent and an analysis of the Pilate legend. Thirty years were to pass before Pastor Miiller finally disposed of the myth, but Gesner is clearly sceptical, and concludes with the robust assertion that, even if evil spirits exist, they are " impotent to harm the faithful who worship the one heavenly light, and Christ the Sun of Justice." A bold challenge to the superstitions of the age, a challenge worthy of the man. Conrad Gesner 36 THE ALPS was born out of due season; and, though he does not seem to have crossed the snow line, he was a mountaineer in the best sense of the term. As we read his work, we seem to hear the voice of a friend. Across the years we catch the accents of a true member of our great fraternity. We leave him with regret, with a wish that we could meet him on some mountain path, and gossip for a while on mountains and mountaineers. But Gesner was not, as is sometimes assumed, alone in this sentiment for the hills. In the first chapter we have spoken of Marti, a professor at Berne, and a close friend of Gesner. The credit for discovering him be- longs, I think, to Mr. Freshfield, who quotes some fine passages from Marti's writings. Marti looks out from the terrace at' Berne on that prospect which no true mountain lover can behold without emotion, and exclaims : " These are the mountains which form our pleasure and delight when we gaze at them from the highest parts of our city, and admire their mighty peaks and broken crags that threaten to fall at any moment. Who, then, would not admire, love, willingly visit, ex- plore, and climb places of this sort ? I should assuredly call those who are not attracted by them dolts, stupid dull fishes, and slow tortoises. ... I am never happier than on THE PIONEERS 37 the mountain crests, and there are no wan- derings dearer to one than those on the mountains." This passage tends to prove that mountain appreciation had already become a common- place with cultured men. Had Marti's views been exceptional, he would have assumed a certain air of defence. He would explain precisely why he found pleasure in such un- expected places. He would attempt to justify his paradoxical position. Instead, he boldly assumes that every right-minded man loves mountains; and he confounds his opponents by a vigorous choice of unpleasant alternatives. Josias Simler was a mountaineer of a very different type. To him belongs the credit of compiling the first treatise on the art of Alpine travel. Though he introduces no personal reminiscences, his work is so free from current superstition that he must have been something of a climber; but, though a climber, he did not share Gesner's enthusiasm for the hills. For, though he seems to have crossed glacier passes, whereas Gesner confined himself to the lower mountains, yet the note of enthusiasm is lacking. His horror of narrow paths, bordering on precipices, is typical of thj age; and if he ventured across a pass he must have done so in the way of business. There is, as we have already 38 THE ALPS pointed out, a marked difference between passes and mountains. A merchant with a holy horror of mountains may be forced to cross a pass in the way of business, but a man will only climb a mountain for the fun of the thing. It is clear that Simler could only see in mountains a seuse of inconvenient barriers to commerce, but as a practical man he set out to codify the existing knowledge. Gesner's mountain work is subjective; it is the litera- ture of emotion ; he is less concerned with the mountain in itself, than with the mountain as it strikes the individual observer. Simler, on the other hand, is the forerunner of the objective school. He must delight those who postulate that all Alpine literature should be the record of positive facts. The personal note is utterly lacking. Like Gesner, he was a professor at Zurich. Unlike Gesner, he was an embodiment of the academic tradition that is more concerned with fact than with emotion. None the less, his work was a very valuable contribution, as it summarised exist- ing knowledge on the art of mountain travel. His information is singularly free from error. He seems to have understood the use of the rope, alpenstocks, crampons, dark spectacles, and the use of paper as a protction against cold. It is strange that crampons, which were used in Simler's days, were only reintro- THE PIONEERS 39 duced into general practice within the last decades, whilst the uncanny warmth of paper is still unknown to many mountaineers. His description of glacier perils, due to concealed crevasses, is accurate, and his analysis of avalanches contains much that is true. We are left with the conviction that snow- and ice-craft is an old science, though originally applied by merchants rather than pure explorers. We quoted Simler, in the first chapter, in support of our contention that foreigners came in great numbers to see and rejoice in the beauty of the Alps. But, though Simler proves that passes were often crossed in the way of business, and that mountains were often visited in search of beauty, he himself was no mountain lover. It is a relief to turn to Scheuchzer, who is a living personality. Like Gesner and Simler, he was a professor at Zurich, and, like them, he was interested in mountains. There the resemblance ceases. He had none of Gesner's fine sentiment for the hills. He did not share Simler's passion for scientific knowledge. He was a very poor mountaineer, and, though he trudged up a few hills, he heartily disliked the toil of the ascent : " Anhelosae quidem sunt scansiones montium " an honest, but scarcely inspiring, comment on mountain 40 THE ALPS travel. Honesty, bordering on the naive, is, indeed, the keynote of our good professor's confessions. Since his time, many ascents have failed for the same causes that pre- vented Scheuchzer reaching the summit of Pilatus, but few mountaineers are candid enough to attribute their failure to " bodily weariness and the distance still to be accom- plished." Scheuchzer must be given credit for being, in many ways, ahead of his age. He protested vigorously against the cruel punishments in force against witches. He was the first to formulate a theory of glacier motion which, though erroneous, was by no means absurd. As a scientist, he did good work in popularising Newton's theories. He published the first map of Switzerland with any claims to accuracy. His greatest scientific work on dragons is dedicated to the English Royal Society, and though Scheuchzer's dragons provoke a smile, we should remember that several members of that learned society subscribed to publish his researches on those fabulous creatures: With his odd mixture of credulity and common sense, Scheuchzer often recalls another genial historian of vulgar errors Like Sir Thomas Browne, he could never dismiss a picturesque legend without a pang. He gives the more blatant absurdities their THE PIONEERS 41 quietus with the same gentle and reluctant touch : " That the sea is the sweat of the earth, that the serpent before the fall went erect like man . . . being neither consonant unto reason nor corresponding unto experi- ment, are unto us no axioms." Thus Browne, and it is with the same tearful and chastened scepticism that Scheuchzer parts with the more outrageous " axioms " in his wonderful collec- tion. But he retained enough to make his work amusing. Like Browne, he made it a rule to believe half that he was told. But on the subject of dragons he has no mental reservations. Their existence is proved by the number of caves that are admirably suited to the needs of the domestic dragon, and by the fact that the Museum, at Lucerne, con- tains an undoubted dragon stone. Such stones are rare, which is not surprising owing to the extreme difhculty of obtaining a genuine unimpaired specimen. You must first catch your dragon asleep, and then cut the stone out of his head. Should the dragon awake the value of the stone will disappear. Scheuchzer refrains from discouraging collectors by hinting at even more unpleasant possibilities. But then there is no need to awaken the dragon. Scatter soporific herbs around him, and help them out by recognised incantations, and the stone should be removed without arousing 42 THE ALPS the dragon. In spite of these anaesthetics, Scheuchzer admits that the process demands a courageous and skilled operator, and perhaps it is lucky that this particular stone was casually dropped by a passing dragon. It is obviously genuine, for, if the peasant who had picked it up had been dishonest, he would never have hit on so obvious and unimagina- tive a tale. He would have told some really striking story, such as that the stone had come from the far Indies. Besides, the stone not only cures haemorrhages (quite common- place stones will cure haemorrhages), but also dysentery and plague. As to dragons, Scheuchzer is even more convincing. He has examined (on oath) scores of witnesses who had observed dragons at first hand. We need not linger to cross-examine these honest folk. Their dragons are highly coloured, and lack nothing but uniformity. Each new dragon that flies into Scheuchzer's net Is gravely classified. Some dragons have feet, others have wings. Some have scales. Scheuchzer is a little puzzled whether dragons with a crest constitute a class of their own, or whether the crest distinguished the male from the female. Each dragon is thus neatly ticketed into place and referred to the sworn deposition of some vir quidam probus. But the dragons had had their day. THE PIONEERS 43 Scheuchzer ushers in the eighteenth century. Let us take leave of him with a friendly smile. He is no abstraction, but a very human soul. We forget the scientist, though his more serious discoveries were not without value. We remember only the worthy professor, panting up his laborious hills in search of quaint knowledge, discovering with simple joy that Gemmi is derived from " gemitus " a groan, quod non nisi crebris gemitibus superetur. No doubt the needy fraternity soon discovered his amiable weakness. An unending procession must have found their way to his door, only too anxious to supply him with dragons of wonderful and fearful construction. Hence, the infinite variety of these creatures. When we think of Scheuchzer, we somehow picture the poor old gentleman, laboriously rearranging his data, on the sworn deposition of some clarissimus homo, what time the latter was bartering in the nearest tavern the price of a dragon for that good cheer in which most of Scheuchzer's fauna first saw the light of day. CHAPTER III THE OPENING UP OF THE ALPS THE climbs, so far chronicled, have been modest achievements and do not include a genuine snow-peak, for the Roche Melon has permanent snow on one side only. We have seen that many snow passes were in regular use from the earliest times ; but genuine Alpine climbing may be said to begin with the ascent of the Titlis. According to Mr. Gribble, this was climbed by a monk of Engleberg, in 1739. Mr. Coolidge, on the other hand, states that it was ascended by four peasants, in 1744. In any case, the ascent was an isolated feat which gave no direct stimulus to Alpine climbing, and Mr. Gribble is correct in dating the continuous history of Alpine climbing from the discovery of Chamounix, in 1741. This famous valley had, of course, a history of its own before that date; but its existence was only made known, to a wider world, by the visit of a group of young Englishmen, towards the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1741, Geneva was enlivened by a vigorous 44 THE OPENING UP OF THE ALPS 45 colony of young Britons. Of these, William Windham was a famous athlete, known on his return to London as " Boxing Windham." While at Geneva, he seems, despite the pres- ence of his " respectable perceptor," Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, the grandson of the theologian, to have amused himself pretty thoroughly. The archives record that he was fined for assault and kindred offences. When these simple joys began to pall he decided to go to Chamounix in search of adventure. His party consisted of himself, Lord Had- dington, Dr. Pococke, the Oriental traveller, and others. They visited Chamounix, and climbed the Montanvert with a large brigade of guides. The ascent to the Montanvert was not quite so simple as it is to-day, a fact which accounts for Windham's highly coloured description. Windham published his account of the journey and his reflections on glaciers, in the Journal Helvetique of Neuchatel, and later in London. It attracted considerable attention and focussed the eyes of the curious on the unknown valley of Chamounix. Among others, Peter Martel, an engineer of Geneva, was inspired to repeat the visit. Like Wind- ham, he climbed the Montanvert and de- scended on to the Mer de Glace; and, like Windham, he published an account of the 46 THE ALPS journey and certain reflections on glaciers and glacier motion. His story is well worth read- ing, and the curious in such matters should turn either to Mr. Cribble's Early Mountain- eers, or to Mr. Matthews' The Annals of Mont Blanc, where they will find Windham's and Martel's letters set forth in full. MartePs letter and his map of Chamounix were printed together with Windham's narra- tive, and were largely responsible for popular- ising Chamounix. Those who wished to earn a reputation for enterprise could hardly do so without a visit to the glaciers of Chamounix. Dr. John Moore, father of Sir John Moore, who accompanied the Duke of Hamilton on the grand tour, tells us that " one could hardly mention anything curious or singular without being told by some of those travellers, with an air of cool contempt : ' Dear Sir, that is pretty well, but take my word for it, it is nothing to the glaciers of Savoy.' ' The Due de la Rochefoucauld considered that the honour of his nation demanded that he should visit the glaciers, to prove that the English were not alone in the possession of courage. More important, in this connection, than Dr. Moore or the duke is the great name of De Saussure. De Saussure belonged to an old French family that had been driven out THE OPENING UP OF THE ALPS 47 of France during the Huguenot persecutions. They emigrated to Geneva, where De Saussure was born. His mother had Spartan views on education ; and from his earlier years the child was taught to suffer the privations due to physical ills and the inclemency of the season. As a result of this adventurous training, De Saussure was irresistibly drawn to the moun- tains. He visited Chamounix in 1760, and was immediately struck by the possibility of ascending Mont Blanc. He does not seem to have cherished any ambition to make the first ascent in person. He was content to follow when once the way had been found; and he offered a reward to the pioneer, and promised to recompense any peasant who should lose a day's work in trying to find the way to the summit of Mont Blanc. The reward was not claimed for many years, but, meanwhile, De Saussure never missed a chance of climbing a mountain. He climbed ^Etna, and made a series of excursions in various parts of the Alps. When his wife complained, he indited a robust letter which every married mountaineer should keep up his sleeve for ready quotation. " In this valley, which I had not previously visited," he writes, " I have made observa- tions of the greatest importance, surpassing my highest hopes; but that is not what you 48 THE ALPS care about. You would sooner God forgive me for saying so see me growing fat like a friar, and snoring every day in the chimney corner, after a big dinner, than that I should achieve immortal fame by the most sublime discoveries at the cost of reducing my weight by a few ounces and spending a few weeks away from you. If, then, I continue to take these journeys, in spite of the annoyance they cause you, the reason is that I feel myself pledged in honour to go on with them, and that I think it necessary to extend my know- ledge on this subject and make my works as nearly perfect as possible. I say to myself : 4 Just as an officer goes out to assault a for- tress when the order is given, and just as a merchant goes to market on market-day, so must I go to the mountains when there are observations to be made.' " De Saussure was partly responsible for the great renaissance of mountain travel that began at Geneva in 1760. A group of en- thusiastic mountaineers instituted a series of determined assaults on the unconquered snows. Of these, one of the most remarkable was Jean-Andre de Luc. De Luc was born at Geneva, in 1727. His father was a watchmaker, but De Luc's life was cast on more ambitious lines. He began as a diplomatist, but gravitated insensibly to THE OPENING UP OF THE ALPS 49 science. He invented the hygrometer, and was elected a member of the Royal Societies of London, Dublin, and Gottingen. Charlotte, the wife of George III, appointed him her reader; and he died at Windsor, having attained the ripe age of ninety. He was a scientific, rather than a sentimental, moun- taineer; his principal occupation was to discover the temperature at which water would boil at various altitudes. His chief claim to notice is that he made the first ascent of the Buet. The Buet is familiar to all who know Chamounix. It rises to the height of 10,291 feet. Its summit is a broad plateau, glacier- capped. Those who have travelled to Italy by the Simplon may, perhaps, recall the broad-topped mountain that seems to block up the western end of the Rhone valley, for the Buet is a conspicuous feature on the line, between Sion and Brigue. It is not a difficult mountain, in the modern sense of the term; but, to climbers who knew little of the nature of snow and glacier, it must have presented quite a formidable appearance. De Luc made several attempts before he was finally success- ful on September 22, 1770. His description of the view from the summit is a fine piece of writing. Familiarity had not staled the glory of such moments; and men might still 50 THE ALPS write, as they felt, without fear that their readers would be bored by emotions that had lost their novelty. Before leaving, De Luc observed that the party were standing on a cornice. A cornice is a crest of windblown snow overhanging a precipice. As the crest often appears per- fectly continuous with the snow on solid foundation, cornices have been responsible for many fatal accidents. De Luc's party naturally beat a hurried retreat ; but " having gathered, by reflection, that the addition of our own weight to this prodigious mass which had supported itself for ages counted for absolutely nothing, and could not possibly break it loose, we laid aside our fears and went back to the terrible terrace." A little science is a dangerous thing; and it was a mere chance that the first ascent of the Buet is not notorious for a terrible accident. It makes one's blood run cold to read of the calm contempt with which De Luc treated the cornice. Each member of the party took it in turn to advance to the edge and look over on to the cliff below supported as to his coat- tails by the rest of the party. De Luc made a second ascent of the Buet, two years later; but it was not until 1779 that a snow peak was again conquered. In that year Murith, the Prior of the St. Bernard THE OPENING UP OF THE ALPS 51 Hospice, climbed the Velan, the broad-topped peak which is so conspicuous a feature from the St. Bernard. It is a very respectable mountain rising to a height of 12,353 feet. Murith, besides being an ecclesiastic, was something of a scientist, and his botanical handbook to the Valais is not without merit. It is to Bourrit, of whom we shall speak later, that we owe the written account of the climb, based on information which Bourrit had at first hand from M. Murith. Murith started on August 80, 1779, with " two hardy hunters," two thermometers, a barometer, and a spirit-level. They slept a night on the way, and proceeded to attack the mountain from the Glacier du Proz. The hardy hunters host their nerve, and tried to dissuade M. Murith from the attempt; but the gallant Prior replied: "Fear nothing; wherever there is danger I will go in front." They encountered numerous difficulties, amongst others a wall of ica which Murith climbed by hacking steps and hand-holds with a pointed hammer. One of the hardy huntsmen then followed; his companion had long since disappeared. They reached the summit without further difficulty, and their impressions of the view are recorded by Bourrit in an eloquent passage which recalls De Luc on the Buet, and once 52 THE ALPS more proves that the early mountaineers were fully alive to the glory of mountain tops ' " A spectacle, no less amazing than magnifi- cent, offered itself to their gaze. The sky seemed to be a black cloth enveloping the earth at a distance from it. The sun shining in it made its darkness all the more con- spicuous. Down below their outlook extended over an enormous area, bristling with rocky peaks and cut by dark valleys. Mont Blanc rose like a sloping pyramid and its lofty head appeared to dominate all the Alps as one saw it towering above them. An imposing stillness, a majestic silence, produced an indescribable impression upon the mind. The noise of the avalanches, reiterated by the echoes, seemed 'to be the only thing that marked the march of time. Raised, so to say, above the head of Nature, they saw the mountains split asunder, and send the frag- ments rolling to their feet, and the rivers rising below them in places where inactive Nature seemed upon the point of death though in truth it is there that she gathers strength to carry life and fertility throughout the world." It is curious in this connection to notice the part played by the Church in the early THE OPENING UP OF THE ALPS 53 history of mountaineering. This is not sur- prising. The local curd lived in the shadow of the great peaks that dominated his valley. He was more cultured than the peasants of his parish ; he was more alive to the spiritual appeal of the high places, and he naturally took a leading part in the assaults on his native mountains. The Titlis and Monte Leone were first climbed by local monks. The prior of the St. Bernard made, as we have seen, a remarkable conquest of a great local peak; and five years later M. Clement, the cure of Champery, reached the summit of the Dent du Midi, that great battlement of rock which forms a background to the eastern end of Lake Geneva. Bourrit, as we shall see, was an ecclesiastic with a great love for the snows. Father Placidus a Spescha was the pioneer of the Todi ; and local priests played their part in the early attempts on the Matter- horn from Italy. " One man, one mountain " was the rule of many an early pioneer; but Murith's love of the snows was not exhausted by this ascent of the Velan. He had already explored the Vakorey glacier with Saussure, and the Otemma glacier with Bourrit. A few years after his conquest of the Velan he turned his attention to the fine wall of cliffs that binds in the Orny glacier on the south. 54 THE ALPS Bourrit, who wrote up Murith's notes on the Velan, was one of the most remarkable of this group of pioneers. He was a whole- hearted enthusiast, and the first man who devoted the most active years of his life to mountaineering. He wins our affection by the readiness with which he gave others due credit for their achievements, a generous characteristic which did not, however, survive the supreme test Paccard's triumph on Mont Blanc. Mountaineers at the end of the eighteenth century formed a close freema- sonry less concerned with individual achieve- ment than with the furthering of common knowledge. We have seen, for instance, that De Saussure cared little who made the first ascent of Mont Blanc provided that the way was opened up for future explorers. Bourrit's actual record of achievement was small. His exploration was attended with little success. His best performance was the discovery, or rediscovery of the Col de G6ant. His great ambition, the ascent of Mont Blanc, failed. Fatigue, or mountain sickness, or bad weather, spoiled his more ambitious climbs. But this matters little. He found his niche in Alpine history rather as a writer than as a moun- taineer. He popularised the Alps. He was the first systematic writer of Alpine books, a fact which earned him the title, " Historian THE OPENING UP OF THE ALPS 55 of the Alps," a title of which he was inordin- ately proud. Best of all, in an age when mountain appreciation was somewhat rare, he marked himself out by an unbounded enthu- siasm for the hills. He was born in 1735, and in one of his memoirs he describes the moment when he first heard the call of the Alps : " It was from the summit of the Voirons that the view of the Alps kindled my desire to become ac- quainted with them. No one could give me any information about them except that they were the accursed mountains, frightful to look upon and uninhabited." Bourrit began life as a miniature painter. A good many of his Alpine water colours have survived. Though they cannot challenge serious comparison with the mountain masterpieces of the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries, they are not without a certain merit. But Bourrit would not have become famous had he not deserted the brush for the pen. When the Alps claimed him, he gave up miniatures, and accepted an appointment as Precentor of Geneva Cathedral, a position which allowed him great leisure for climbing. He used to climb in the summer, and write up his journeys in the winter. He soon compiled a formidable list of books, and was hailed throughout Europe as the Historian of the Alps. There 56 THE ALPS was no absurd modesty about Bourrit. He accepted the position with serene dignity. His house, he tells us, is " embellished with beautiful acacias, planned for the comfort and convenienca of strangers who do not wish to leave Geneva without visiting the Historian of the Alps." He tells us that Prince Henry of Prussia, acting on the advice of Frederick the Great, honoured him with a visit. Bourrit, in fact, received recognition in many distinguished quarters. The Princess Louise of Prussia sent him an engraving to recall " a woman whom you have to some extent taught to share your lofty sentiments." Bourrit was always popular with the ladies, and no climber has shown a more generous appreciation for the sex. " The sex is very beautiful here," became, as Mr. Gribble tells us, " a formula with him as soon as he began writing and continued a formula after he had passed his threescore years and ten." We have said that Bourrit's actual record as a climber is rather disappointing. We may forget this, and remember only his whole-hearted devotion to the mountains. Even Gesner, Petrarch, and Marti seem balanced and cold when they set their tributes besides Bourrit's large enthusiasm. Bourrit did not carry a barometer with him on his travels. He did not feel the need to justify THE OPENING UP OF THE ALPS 57 his wanderings by collecting a mass of scientific data. Nor did he assume that a mountain tour should be written up as a mere guide- book record of times and route. He is supremely concerned with the ennobling effect of mountain scenery on the human mind. " At Chamounix," he writes, " I have seen persons of every party in the state, who imagined that they loathed each other, never- theless treating one another with courtesy, and even walking together. Returning to Geneva, and encountering the reproaches of their various friends, they merely answered in their defence, ' Go, as we have gone, to the Montanvert, and take our share of the pure air that is to be breathed there; look thence at the unfamiliar beauties of Nature; contemplate from that terrace the greatness of natural objects and the littleness of man; and you will no longer be astonished that Nature has enabled us to subdue our passions.' It is, in fact, .the mountains that many men have to thank for their reconciliation with their fellows, and with the human race; and it is there that the rulers of the world and the heads of the nations ought to hold their meetings. Raised thus above the arena of passions and petty interests, and placed more immediately under the influence of Divine inspiration, one would see them descend from 58 THE ALPS these mountains, each like a new Moses bringing with them codes of law based upon equity and justice." This is fine writing with a vengeance, just as Ruskin's greatest passages are fine writing. Before we take our leave of Bourrit, let us see the precentor of the cathedral exhorting a company of guides with sacerdotal dignity. One is irresistibly reminded of Japan, where mountaineering and sacrificial rites go hand in hand " The Historian of the Alps, in rendering them this justice in the presence of a great throng of people, seized the opportunity of exhorting the new guides to observe the virtues proper to then* state in life. c Put yourselves,' he said to them, ' in the place of the strangers, who come from the most distant lands to admire the marvels of Nature under these wild and savage aspects ; and justify the confidence which they repose in you. You have learnt the great part which these magni- ficent objects of our contemplation play in the organisation of the world ; and, in pointing out their various phenomena to their aston- ished eyes, you will rejoice to see people raise their thoughts to the omnipotence of the Great Being who created them.' The speaker was profoundly moved by the ideas with THE OPENING UP OF THE ALPS 59 which the subject inspired him, and it was impossible for his listeners not to share in his emotion." Let us remember that Bourrit put his doctrine into practice. He has told us that he found men of diverse creeds reconciled beneath the shadow of Mont Blanc. Bourrit himself was a mountaineer first, and an ecclesiastic second. Perhaps he was no worse as a Protestant precentor because the mountains had taught him their eternal lessons of tolerance and serene indifference to the petty issues which loom so large be- neath- the shadow of the cathedral. Catholic or Protestant it was all the same to our good precentor, provided the man loved the hills. Prior Murith was his friend; and every Catholic mountaineer should be grateful to his memory, for he persuaded one of their archbishops to dispense climbers from the obligation of fasting in Lent. CHAPTER IV THE 8TOEY OF MONT BLANC THE history of Mont Blanc has been made the subject of an excellent monograph, and the reader who wishes to supplement the brief sketch which is all that we can attempt should buy The Annals of Mont Blanc, by Mr. C. E. Mathews. We have already seen that De Saussure offered a reward in 1760 to any peasant who could find a way to the summit of Mont Blanc. In the quarter-of-a- century that followed, several attempts were made. Amongst others, Bourrit tried on two occasions to prove the accessibility of Mont Blanc. Bourrit himself never reached a greater height than 10,000 feet; but some of his companions attained the very respect- able altitude of 14,300 feet. De Saussure attacked the mountain without success in 1785, leaving the stage ready for the entrance of the most theatrical of mountaineers. Jacques Balmat, the hero of Mont Blanc, impresses himself upon the imagination as no other climber of the day. He owes his 60