ON MOUNTAINS AND MANKIND; 345 



Charlotte at Windsor, where he flits across Miss Biirney's pages as 

 the friend of IlerseheKat Slough and the jest of tipsy royal dukes. 

 Oddl}' enough, the first sound guess as to glacier movement was made 

 l)V one Bordier, who had no scientific pretensions. I reprinted many 

 years ago the singular ])assage in which he compared glacier ice to 

 '' cire amollie," soft wax, "flexible et ductile jusciu'a un certain 

 point,'' and descrihed it as flowing in the manner of licpiids {AIj>. ./., 

 IX, 3'27). He added this remarkal)le suggestion, foreshadowing the 

 investigations of Pi'ofcssor Kicliter and M. Foivl : ''It is very de- 

 sirable that there shonhl be at Chamonix some one cai)abh' of observ- 

 ing the glaciers for a series of years and comjiaring their advance 

 and oscillations with meteorological records."" '^I\) the school of 

 (ieneva succeeded the school of Neuchatel. Desor and Agassiz; the 

 feat of T)e Saussure was rivaled on the Jungfrau and the Finster- 

 aarhorn by the iNIeyers of Bern. They in turn were succeeded by the 

 British school, Forbes and Tyndall, Reilly and Wills, in 1S40-18(;(). 



In 1857 the Alpine Club was founded in this country. In the half 

 century since that date the nations of western P^ui'ope have ennilated 

 one another iu forming similar bodies, one of the ol)jects of wdiich has 

 ))een to collect and set in order information as to the mountains and to 

 fui-ther their scientific as well as their geographical exploration. 



Wliat bowlders, oi' rather ])ebbles, can we add to the enormous mo- 

 raine of modern Al])ine literature — a moraine the lighter portions of 

 which it is to be hoped, for the sake of [)osterity, that the torrent of 

 time nuiy speedily make away with? 



Foi- fifty years I have loved and at fre(iuent intervals wandered and 

 climbed in the Alps. I have liad something of a grand i)assi<)n for 

 the C^aucasus. I am on terms of visiting acquaintance with the Pyre- 

 nees and the Ilinudaya, the Apeiniines and the Algerian Atlas, the 

 mountains of (ireece, Syi'ia, C^)rsica, and Noi'way. I will try to set 

 in order some obser\'at ions and com]5arisons suggested by these va- 

 rious experiences. 



As one travels east fi"om the .Vtlantic thi'ough the four great I'anges 

 of the Old World the j)eaks grow out not only in absolute lieight but 

 also in abruptness of fonn and in elevation above the connecting 

 ridges. The snow aiul ice region increases in a corresponding man- 

 ner. The Pyrenees ha\'e few fine rock peaks excejjf the l*ic du Midi 

 d'Ossau; its chief glacier sununits, the Vignemale, Mont Perdu, the 

 Maladetta, correspond to the Titlis or the Buet in ihe Alps. The 

 jjeaks of the Alj)s are inlinite in their variety and admiral)le in their 

 clear-cut outlines and graceful curves. But the centi-al group of the 

 Caucasus, that which culminates in Dykhtau, Koshtantau, and Shkara, 

 17,000 feet summits (Koshtantau falls only 120 feet below this figure), 

 has even more stately peaks than those that cluster round Zermatt. 



Seek the far eastern eiul of the Himalaya, visit Sikhim, and you 



