FORERUNNERS 27 



It is quite true that he professed in youth 1 a liking for ' torrents, 

 rocks, firs, dark woods, mountains, rough up-and-down -hill roads 

 with precipices at hand to make me tremble.' But read the 

 context ; the precipices he trembled at were those he could admire 

 from a high road protected by a safe parapet, and the enjoyments 

 he got from them were feeling dizzy and the puerile delight of 

 dropping stones and watching them shiver before they reached the 

 torrent below. He once penetrated as far as the Upper Valais. 

 There he admired the cloud effects, enjoyed the qualities of the 

 mountain air, and prophesied the air -cure . But he was far more 

 interested in the Alpine peasantry than in the Alps themselves. 

 There is nothing to prove that he ever noticed a snow-peak 

 or admired a glacier. His descriptions of the details of the 

 mountain landscape remain singularly vague and formless. So 

 vague indeed are they that among the crowd of commentators on 

 Rousseau's writings no one has yet ventured to identify the exact 

 region of his rambles. Yet it seems to me a key is supplied by 

 Bourrit in his Description des Alpes Pennine^ et EMtiennes (1782). 

 He tells us how, after visiting Val d'Anniviers, he wandered 

 on to a group of villages where he met with hospitality similar 

 to that which had previously been shown to Rousseau by their 

 inhabitants. The villages he names, Oberemps, Unteremps, 

 Unterbeck, and Eggen (Bourrit prints Equen), can all be found on 

 the Siegfried Map the two first above Turtmann, west of the 

 Turtmann Thai, the others on the broad brows that overlook the 

 Rhone valley between Turtmann and Visp. 2 



It is significant that, despite his many opportunities, Rousseau 

 never cared to make a second pleasure trip to the mountains, or 



1 Confessions, part i. book iv., near end. 



2 At Geneva, where Rousseau's memory is still kept alive by a society named 

 after him, students whose opinion carries just weight are inclined altogether 

 to set aside the statement of Bourrit quoted above. The grounds, as I under- 

 stand, alleged for this attitude are the lack of any direct evidence in Rousseau's 

 writings as to the locality which afforded him material for the description of 

 Alpine landscape and peasantry he puts into St. Preux's letter, and the habitual 

 untrustworthiness of Bourrit. 



It is, doubtless, true that the only positive evidence in the case is Bourrit's 

 assertion. But in my opinion considerable indirect support for it may be derived 

 both from known facts and from Rousseau's language. If we turn to the Con- 

 fessions (part ii. book viii.) we learn, first, that the descriptions in the Nouvelle 

 Hiloise were framed on his own experience ; we learn further that Rousseau crossed 

 the Simplon on his return from Venice in 1744, that the district he described was 



