TEN YEARS' ALPINE TRAVEL (1774-84) 167 



At Grindelwald at this date travellers, as was so often the 

 casein remote parts of the Alps fiftyyears ago, were still entertained 

 as ' paying guests ' by the pastor, or priest. De Saussure found 

 some difficulty in explaining to the guide provided for him that 

 he wanted not 'to visit the glaciers,' as was already the fashion, 

 but to get a near view of the Schreckhorn the reputed rival of 

 Mont Blanc. The guide led his traveller up the slopes in the 

 direction of the Great Scheideck, whence the top of the Schreckhorn 

 may be seen behind the mass of the Mettenberg. This was not at 

 all what de Saussure wanted, and he insisted on returning. When 

 near the village his guide gave him a choice between the easy 

 path to the foot of the Lower Glacier, used by tourists, and a 

 long and, by his account, perilous one leading to the source of the 

 glacier, whence he asserted the Schreckhorn would not be visible. 

 De Saussure, however, trusting to his map, and distrusting his 

 informant, decided to risk the venture. As usual, he had his 

 servant with him. 



I quote extracts from the detailed account of this excursion 

 given in de Saussure 's manuscript journal : 



' I began to climb through a pine wood up a very steep but per- 

 fectly safe path. After ascending through the wood for three-quarters 

 of an hour, we came to the foot of a limestone crag with thick beds 

 and began to turn to the west (the right) and take the traverse on the 

 edge of the precipices. For ten minutes or so one has a pine wood 

 under one's feet, and there is consequently no danger, but beyond 

 the forest one begins to see the great drop there is to the glacier 

 underfoot, whose broken waves seem designed to mutilate the 



aarhorn, at the source of the Aar, the Fiescherhorner, the peaks behind which liea 

 Fiesch. I may surprise most of my readers if I add the Schreckhorn to this list ; 

 for its name has hitherto been universally interpreted as the Peak of Terror. It 

 had long struck me as curious that a peak which from the basin of Grindelwald is 

 far from a conspicuous object should have acquired such a name from an un- 

 imaginative peasantry ; so that I was not surprised when in an article describing 

 the Bregenzer Wald I lighted on a sentence which appears to furnish a very 

 plausible alternative derivation. This is the passage : 



' Schrochen. Oh, the lovely village ; and how poor the etymological jest 

 which would derive the name of this charming spot from a word meaning terror ! 

 In the Bregenzer Wald district Schrochen signifies a rocky bluff, and this is far 

 more likely to be the true derivation.' (Annuaire du Club Alpin Francais, vol. 29.) 



I find that the first author to treat in detail of the mountains of the Bernese 

 Oberland, Thomas Schopf (circa 1670), writes of the ' Schreckshorn (sic), quae vox 

 sonaret obliquum cornu, vel terribile cornu. Utrumque verb nomen huic monti 

 convenientissime quadrat ' : thus supporting my conjecture. See Coolidge's 

 Josias Simler, p. 250*. 



