Mountain Journeys 97 



other discomforts, to which most of those who have made the ascent 

 of Mont Blanc say that they were prey. Should we attribute it to the 

 difference of 500 meters between the height of Mont Blanc and that 

 of the Jungfrau? Or should we seek the cause of it in the habit we 

 had formed during several weeks of living at an elevation of more 

 than 2,590 meters? But we should note that M. Duchatelier, who had 

 been in the mountains only a few days, was not ill either. Without 

 claiming to decide this question, which belongs more particularly to 

 the realm of physiology, I am, however, inclined to think that there is 

 a little exaggeration in all that has been told us on this subject. Per- 

 haps also a few travellers have been deceived by their imaginations, 

 like the students of medicine who every day think themselves attacked 

 by the disease the symptoms of which the professor has just set forth 

 to them. Some German physiologists, if I am not mistaken, even claim 

 to have observed the most extraordinary symptoms on mountains only 

 ' a few thousand feet high. (P. 409). 



He refers again 137 to this immunity in reference to his ascent 

 of the Schreckhorn, or rather the Lauteraarhorn (4030 meters), 

 August 8, 1842: 



I should note that no one of us experienced the least discomfort 

 either on the summit, or on the ascent, or on the descent, so that in 

 this respect I can fully confirm what I said elsewhere about the so- 

 called ill effects of lofty regions. 



And yet to this absolute conclusion we can oppose the follow- 

 ing fact from Desor's 138 own accounts: 



We had been travelling thus for a quarter of an hour when 

 suddenly our friend Nicolet shouted to us that he could do no more. 

 He experienced that complete fatigue by which one is attacked some- 

 times in the lofty Alps, but which passes very quickly if one rests a 

 moment .... "I feel sure," he said, "that I shall never reach Zermatt 

 alive" .... (P. 342.) 



The travellers were only at the foot of Mont Cervin. 

 Gottlieb Studer 139 ascended the Jungfrau August 13, 1842; he 

 felt no discomfort either and gives a strange reason for it: 



We perceived none of the symptoms which at such great heights 

 travellers have often attributed to the rarefaction of the air; yet we 

 must note that in such a long ascent, for three long hours, the chest 

 can rest .... (P. 313). 



On the opposite extreme, another tourist, Spitaler, 140 who with 

 several companions made unimportant ascents, certainly exag- 

 gerated the sufferings experienced. So, in regard to the "Venetian" 

 on Pinzgau, a mountain of 3675 meters, he makes the following 

 lamentable picture: 



