FORERUNNERS 7 



there are Baths (at Bormio) and a group of snowy summits (the 

 Ortler). He is not above chronicling for how many soldi a day 

 you can get good living in the village inns, or how in the mountains 

 behind Chiavenna the hunters pursue on hands and knees deer 

 (probably chamois), bouquetin, and 'terrible bears.' He was, as 

 his notes indicate, 1 once at Geneva, where he mentions the river 

 Arve and the fair that was held in the suburb of St. Gervais at 

 midsummer. It is possible that he may have been consulted on 

 the project of new fortifications in hand about that date. 



But by far the most interesting of his mountain excursions 

 was the ascent of a mountain he calls Mon Boso. For long it 

 remained unidentified, and it is to an Italian writer, Signer 

 Uzielli, that we owe the solving of the riddle. For I cannot but 

 hold that he has been successful where I and many others had gone 

 astray. The Italian Ordnance maps show that this name is still 

 in use for two of the tops of the lofty crest that stretches down 

 from Monte Rosa and divides Val Sesia from Val de Lys and the 

 Biellese. 2 Leonardo, it may be objected, describes his Mon Boso 

 as part of the range that divides France from Italy, from the base 

 of which flow four rivers (identified elsewhere as the Rhine, Rhone, 

 Po, and Danube) to the four different points of the compass. But 

 at that date divisions in political geography were vague . Germany 

 was generally regarded as ending at the limits of the Swiss Cantons 

 that is, about the St. Gotthard. The Valais, under its Bishop, 

 was connected more closely with Savoy than with the Empire. 

 Again, with respect to the four rivers named, we have to remember 

 that tributaries were often treated as sources, or rather that the 

 particular source now recognised was not always that accepted 

 by early geographers. Thus, for example, the Inn was reckoned 

 the main stream of the Danube. 



There seems good reason to believe that Leonardo touched a 

 glacier. He reports finding in July ' a huge mass of ice formed 



1 The notes are numbered 300, 1030, 1031, 1057, 1060 in Dr. Paul Richter's 

 Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci (2nd vol., London, 1883). One of them is 

 attached to a sketch. Dr. Richter's translations of notes 300 and 1060 stand 

 in need of some correction. 



2 On a map of Lombardy published in 1749 ' M. Boso Rosa ' (sic) is printed 

 north of the Val Sesia. This seems to indicate that the two names were either 

 confused or used indifferently. Rosa (Ruize, Roesa = Glacier) may have been 

 properly applied to the snows, Boso (Bosco ?) to the woods and pasturages below 

 the snow level. 



