PROFESSOR IN BERLIN 323 



close of his Rectorial year, wearied with incessant official and 

 scientific work, he went for three weeks to Pontresina, where 

 he had been used to refresh himself in body and mind by 

 long visits. 



'Although Helmholtz grew older,' writes Blaserna to the 

 author, ' and began to feel trouble in his respiratory organs, he 

 did not give up climbing. He looked on mountaineering as 

 a cure, when properly administered. Thus he told me one 

 day that he intended to climb the magnificent Piz Languard. 

 I offered myself as his companion; but for a long time he 

 would not hear of it, as he thought I should go too fast for him. 

 It was only when I promised to keep behind, and give him no 

 opportunity for talking, that he accepted my company. It is 

 notoriously an ascent with a good path, which a strong climber 

 can do in three hours, a moderate walker in four. We took 

 quite six hours over it : but Helmholtz arrived in good con- 

 dition, spread out his map, and studied all the different 

 mountains, and after we had rested there an hour we started 

 down again, and returned safe and well to Pontresina. In 

 the last years of his visits to Pontresina he gave up the 

 mountains, but he made two little ascents with great regularity 

 every morning and afternoon, up the Muottas da Pontresina 

 or da Celerina, or up the Schafberg. The iron regularity with 

 which he accomplished his two walks every day was amazing. 

 They were unfortunately his last. A few years later, Pontresina 

 lost, as one might say, by his death its distinguishing scientific 

 character.' 



After he had left Pontresina, and had spent some weeks with 

 his wife at Interlaken, he wrote from Thun on September 15, 

 1879, to his friend Knapp at New York : ' Relatively speaking, 

 things have gone better this year than previously in Berlin. I 

 have at last learned how much I can get out of myself in work 

 and pleasure, and am stubborn and unresponsive to people 

 who try to take up my time when I am tired.' 



In the Easter holidays of 1880, he took a journey of several 

 weeks in Spain, going as far as Tangier in Africa. His full 

 letters to his wife give us a lively account of the impressions 

 made on him by art and nature ; a few short extracts may be 

 cited : 



'Barcelona, Palm Sunday, March 21. From Nimes we made 



Y 2 



