lii Centennial Anniversary 



Men crossed the mountains for business, and there were hardy 

 guides well acquainted with the country, but they visited passes, 

 not peaks. And not till more than a quarter of a century 

 later did the guide Balmat succeed in finding a path to the top. 

 The very next year (1787), de Saussure made his famous ascent, 

 the first in history when any high mountain was climbed for 

 scientific observation. There was a second ascent the following 

 year, but no other till 1802. During the twenty-five years after 

 de Saussure, there were less than half a dozen ascents; but no 

 attempts whatever, that I am aware of, were made to climb any 

 other high peaks. About 1810 were begun by Agassiz and 

 Forbes those researches on glaciers, classic in the annals of 

 science. 



When these pioneers had successfully frightened away the 

 demons and devils that had so long guarded the mountain mys- 

 teries and veiled their beauties, the general public, learned and 

 unlearned people alike, began to find pleasure in the contempla- 

 tion of the wild and the grand, and this sentiment now finds 

 abundant expression in poetry, song, literature, and art. The 

 exploration of mountains for scientific investigation has resulted 

 in enormous gain to mankind in intellectual and aesthetic pleasure. 

 There is to-day scarcely a mountain range in any country of our 

 civilization but has a society or club of devotees organized for its 

 study. As learned societies, they have greatly promoted our 

 geographical knowledge ; incidentally they have contributed in 

 large measure to the amount of pleasure to be derived from travel 

 and from the better appreciation of the beauties of nature. 



Switzerland, which had been shunned for two thousand years 

 because of its dreary mountains, has now, because of those same 

 mountains, become the playground of Europe, and mountain 

 climbing, about which so many tales of terror were formerly told, 

 has now become a pastime and a sport. Railways carry the 

 strong and the weak alike to peaks high in the clouds. 



The publications of learned societies, under various names and 

 in various ways, furnish by far the most comprehensive literature 

 of science, philosophy, history, and art, that we have. For a time, 

 this was almost the only way of publishing to the world new 

 discoveries. To-day it is as pervasive as it is extensive, and as yet 

 no substitute has been found for this means of publishing and dis- 



