ON MOUNTAINS AND MANKIND. 343 



nn early date. I will not count the Swiss Baden, of which a geog- 

 rapher, who was also a-^jope, ^IDneas Silvius (Pius II), records the 

 attractions, for it is iir the Jiira, not the Alps; but Pfiifers, where 

 wounded warriors Avent to be healed, was a scene of dissipation, and 

 the waters of St. Moritz were vaunted as superseding wine. I may 

 he excused, since I wrote this particular passage myself a good many 

 years ago, for quoting a few sentences bearing on this point from 

 Murray's Handbook to Switzerland, " In the sixteenth century fifty 

 treatises dealing with twenty-one ditFerent resorts were published. St. 

 Moritz, which had been brought into notice by Paracelsus (died 1541), 

 Avas one of the most famous baths. In 1501 Matthew Schinner, the 

 famous Prince Bishop of Sion, built ' a magniiicent hotel ' at I^euker- 

 bad, to which the wealthy were carried u]> in panniers on the back of 

 mules. Brieg, Gurnigel, near Bern, the Baths of Masino, Tarasp, 

 and Pfafers were also popular in early times. Leonardo da Vinci 

 mentions the Baths of I^ormio, and (iesner went there." 



It is not, however, with the emotional influences or the picturesque 

 aspect of mountains that science concerns itself, but with their phys- 

 ical examination. If I have lingered too long on my preamble I can 

 only plead as an excuse that a love of one's subject is no bad ciualifi- 

 cation for dealing with it, and that it has tempted me to endeavor to 

 show you grounds for believing that a love of mountains is no modern 

 affectation, but a feeling as old and as widespread as humanity. 



Their scientific investigation has naturally been of comparatively 

 modern date. There are a few passages about the effects of altitude, 

 there are orographical descriptions more or less accurate in the 

 authors of antiquity. But for attempts to explain the origin of 

 mountains, to investigate and account for the details of their struc- 

 ture, Ave shall find little before the notes of Leonardo da Vinci, that 

 marvelous man, Avho combined, ])erhaps, more than any one who lias 

 ever lived the artistic and the scientific mind. His ascent of Monte 

 Boso about 1511, a mountain Avhich may be found under this name on 

 the Italian ordnance map on the spur separating Val Sesia and the 

 Biellese, was the first ascent by a physical observer. Gesner, Avith all 

 his mountain enthusiasm, found a scientific interest in the Alps 

 mainW, if not solely, in their botany. 



The phenomenon Avhich fh-st drew men of science to SAvitzerland 

 was the Grindelwald glaciers — '' miracles of nature '' they called them. 

 Why these glaciers in particular, you nuiy ask, when there are so 

 many in the Alps? The answer is obvious. SnoAv and ice on the 

 '' mountain tops that freeze " are no miracle. But Avhen Iavo great 

 tongues of ice Avere found thrusting themselves doAvn among meadows 

 and corn and cottages, upsetting barns aiul covering fields, and even 

 the marble qiuirries from which the citizens of Bern dug their man- 



