BONNET AND HALLER 415 



adventures extended hardly, if at all, beyond the ' alps ' in the 

 original and local sense of the word the cow-pastures where the 

 Alpine flora is richest. The recesses of the Pennine Alps were to 

 him ' terrible solitudes.' The Stockhorn and Niesen, the Gemmi, 

 the Grimsel, the Furka and the Joch Pass, the Scheideck, the 

 Upper Steinberg and Tschingeltritt, the heights above Aigle 

 these were the scenes of his botanical raids. 



It is true that in a letter written in 1760 he asserts that he has 

 recently been ' half a league above the snow level in a horrible 

 place surrounded by rocks, snow, and ice,' but a league in those 

 days usually meant an hour's walk. He had to struggle in middle 

 life against physical disability. In the same year he reports that 

 he was very much fatigued by an ascent of the Chamossaire 

 (6950 feet), a grassy viewpoint behind Villars, and next summer, 

 at the very moderate age of fifty-three, he discovered that his 

 own legs were no longer capable of carrying him uphill, and that 

 no horse could be found equal to his weight, so that he had to con- 

 fine himself to the lower slopes and leave the heights to his numerous 

 band of assistants. But if Haller did not come up to the modern 

 definition of a mountaineer, he was for many years a persistent 

 Alpine traveller. Li this respect his record compares very favour- 

 ably with that of Rousseau, who never crossed a pass or climbed 

 a single summit for pleasure. That Haller looked on mountain 

 landscapes with appreciative discernment is proved not only by his 

 successful poem, but also by passages in some of his minor works, 

 as where he describes the Wetterhorn ' raising its unconquered 

 peak lit by the russet glow through a dark crown of clouds above 

 the blue ridges of the lower hills.' When in 1776 he exclaims, 

 ' What a poor observer is this Bourrit ! And what a misfortune 

 that so much exertion and danger should be undergone for the sake 

 of a view, beautiful or frightful,' we must put down the outburst 

 against view-hunters to petulance excited by Bourrit 's lack of 

 botanical observation and exuberant style rather than to any 

 indifference on Haller's part to the scenery he had sung the 

 praises of with so much success. Haller was unquestionably irrit- 

 able. An engraving of a portrait of himself, which he thought 

 ' abominable,' made him vow to tear it out of all the copies of his 

 book he could lay hands on. 



The extent of the travels of Haller's swarm of young botanists 



