276 CLIMBING IN ENGLAND 



practised in this country, which Mr. Haskett Smith 

 recently published, 1 though it is not in the Cumberland 

 Fells that the taste for mountain-craft usually origin- 

 ates. It is the High Alps that make the first and 

 obvious appeal to the uninitiated. The gratification of 

 the sense of sight is the main inducement held out by 

 the mountain-tops. The rims and peaks of the ice- 

 capped walls which rise so high and so steep that the 

 eye does not readily see clear of their summits, unless 

 the natural poise of the head be altered, promises a 

 view so boundless and majestic if once the barrier be 

 topped, that the imagination is kept in a constant 

 crescendo of excitement and curiosity until the summit 

 is reached. To stand level with the heads of twenty 

 Alps, whose glittering peaks stud the horizon like a 

 riviere of brilliants, or to see the plains of Lombardy 

 spread, like a carpet, ten thousand feet below, and thirty 

 miles beyond, or the rising sun " stand tiptoe on the 

 misty mountain-top," or the " bright white lightning " 

 leap from the thunderstorm in the valley below, or, 

 best of all, to look from some untrodden peak from 

 which no human eye ever yet gazed, these are the 

 promises which beckon the climbers to the mountain. 

 Experience often shows them to be delusive ; but it is 

 not experience which issues the first summons. That 

 is the work of imagination, though experience often 

 transforms it into a longing which outlasts the ability 

 to gratify it. The exhilaration of the air is such that 



1 Climbing in the British Isles England. By W. P. Haskett 

 Smith. London : Longmans. 



