12 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



those among them. . . . They are the Theatre of the Lord, displaying 

 monuments of past ages, such as precipices, rocks, peaks, chasms, 

 and never-melting glaciers.' 



The foregoing are only a selection from many equally enthusiastic 

 outbursts. 



Nor are their books the only evidence we have of the love 

 of mountains in these scholars of the Renaissance. The moun- 

 tains themselves bear, or once bore, records even more impressive. 

 Most Swiss travellers have climbed to the picturesque old castle 

 at Thun and seen, beyond the clear flood of the rushing Aar, the 

 green heights of the outposts of the Alps, the Stockhorn and the 

 Niesen. Our friend Marti, who scaled the former peak, records 

 that he found on the summit 'tituli, rhythmi, et proverbia 

 saxis inscripta una cum imaginibus et nominibus auctoram. Inter 

 alia cujusdam docti et montium amoenitate capti observare 



licebat illud : 



t t/-\ 



(J T<av opuv 



' Inscriptions, rhymes, and old saws carved on the rocks with the 

 reflections (?) and names of their authors. Amongst others was notice- 

 able this record of some scholar captivated by the mountain charm, 

 " The love of mountains is best." ' l 



One more example may be taken from the sixteenth century. 

 Josias Simler, a pupil and the biographer of Gesner, published 

 in 1574 a Description of Valais and the Alps. In a dedicatory 

 letter to the Bishop of Sion, which, after the fashion of the time, 

 serves as an introduction to the dainty little volume, he para- 

 phrases the passage I have quoted from his master's Admiration 

 of Mountains. Simler furnishes a great deal of topographical and 

 practical information, not only as to the high passes then in use, 

 but also on the precautions taken in crossing them. His readers 

 find themselves assisting at the birth of the craft of mountaineering 

 above the snow level. Simler describes in detail the passage of 

 the St. The'odule, mentioning the employment of guides and the 

 rope, the alpenstock, crampons, hoops for use on the feet on soft 

 snow, glass spectacles (vitrea conspicilia), precautions against 



1 For further details see Coolidge's Josias Simler et les Origines de FAlpinisme, 

 a vast volume full of specimens of and particulars relating to the early Alpine 

 authors, and in particular to Conrad Gesner and Marti. 



