43° 



NA TURE 



, [September i, 1904 



ainores ") " when we gaze at them from the higher parts 

 of our city and admire their mighty peaks and broken crags 

 that tlireaten to fall at any moment. Here we watch the 

 risings and settings of the sun and seek signs of the weather. 

 In them we find food not only for our eyes and our minds 

 but also for our bellies"; and he goes on to enumerate 

 the dairy products of the Oberland and the happy life of its 

 population. I quote again this good man: "Who, then, 

 would not admire, love, willingly visit, explore, and climb 

 places of this sort? I assuredly 'should call those who are 

 not attracted by them mushrooms, stupid, dull fishes, and 

 slow tortoises " (" fungos, stupidos insulsos pisces, lentosque 

 chelones "). " In truth, I cannot describe the sort of affec- 

 tion and natural love with which I am drawn to mountains, 

 so that I am never happier than on the mountain crestsj 

 and there are no wanderings dearer to me than those on the 

 niountains." "They are the theatre of the Lord, display- 

 mg monuments of past ages, such as precipices, rocks, 

 peaks and chasms, and never-melting glaciers"; and so 

 on through many eloquent paragraphs. 



I will only add two sentences from the preface to Simler's 

 "Vallesiai et Alpium Descriptio,"" first published in 1574, 

 which seejn to me a strong piece of evidence in favour of 

 my view : — " In the entire district, and particularly in the 

 very lofty ranges by which the Vallais is on all sides 

 surrounded, wonders of Nature offer themselves to our view 

 and admiration. With my countrvmen many of them have 

 through familiarity lost their attraction ; but foreigners are 

 overcome at the mere sight of the Alps, and regard as 

 marvels what we through habit pav no attention to.'" 



Mr. Coolidge, in his singularly interesting footnotes goes 

 on to show that the books that remain to us are not isolated 

 instances of a feeling for mountains in the age of the 

 Renaissance. The mountains themselves bear, or once 

 bore, records even more impressive. Most of us have 

 climbed to the picturesque old castle at Thun and seen beyond 

 the rushing Aar the green heights of the outposts of the 

 -Alps, the Stockhorn, and the Niesen. Our friend Marti 

 who climbed the former peak about 1558, records that he 

 found on the summit " tituli, rythmi, et proverbia saxis 

 inscripta uni cum imaginibus et nominibus auctorum. Inter 

 alia cujusdam docti et montium amoenitate capti observare 

 licebat illud : 



Ihe love of mountains is best." In those five words some 

 bwiss professor anticipated the doctrine of Ruskin and the 

 creed of Leslie Stephen, and of all men who have found 

 mountains the best companions in the vicissitudes of life. 



In the annals of art it would be easv to find additional 

 proof of the attention paid by men to 'mountains three to 

 four hundred years ago. The late Josiah Gilbert, in a 

 charming but too little-known volume, " Landscape iii Art," 

 has shown how many great painters depicted in their back- 

 grounds their native hills. Titian is the most conspicuous 

 example. 



It will perhaps be answered that this love of mountains 

 led to no practical result, bore no visible fruit, and therefore 

 can have been but a sickly plant. Some of mv hearers may 

 teel inclined to point out that it was left to the latter half 

 of the nineteenth century to found Climbers' Clubs. It 

 would take too long to adduce all the practical reasons 

 which delayed the appearance of these fine fruits of peace 

 and an advanced civilisation. I am content to remind you 

 that the love of mountains and the desire to climb them 

 are distinct tastes. Thev are often united, but their union 

 IS accidental, not essential. A passion for golf does not 

 necessarily argue a love of levels. I would suggest that 

 more outward and visible signs than are generallv 'imagined 

 of the familiar relations between men and mountains in 

 early times may be found. The choicest spots in the .Alpine 

 region— Chamonix, Engelberg, Disentis, Einsiedlen, Pesio, 

 '"<■ . '-"■''>nde Chartreuse— were seized on by recluses; the 

 .'ilpine Baths were in full swing at quite' an early date. 

 I will not count the Swiss Baden, of which a geographer 

 who was also a Pope, yEneas Silvius (Pius II.) records the 

 attractions, for it is in the Jura, not the .Alps; but PfSfers, 

 vvhere wounded warriors went to be healed, was a scene of 

 dissipation, and the waters of St. Moritz were vaunted as 

 superseding- wine. .1 may be excused, since I wrote this 

 particular passage myself a good manv vears ago, for 



i«o. 1818, VOL. ro] 



quoting a few sentences bearing on this point from 

 " Murray's Handbook to Switzerland." In the sixteenth 

 century fifty treatises dealing with twenty-one different 

 resorts were published. St. Moritz, which had been 

 brought into notice by Paracelsus (died 1541), was one of 

 the most famous batiis. In 1501 Matthe'w Schinner, the 

 famous Prince Bishop of Sion, built " a magnificent hotel " 

 at Leukerbad, to which the w-ealthy were carried up in 

 panniers on the backs of mules. Brieg, Gurnigel, near 

 Bern, the Baths of Masino, Tarasp, and Pfafers were also 

 popular in early times. Leonardo da Vinci mentions the 

 baths of Bormio, and Gesner went there. 



It is not, however, with the emotional influences or the 

 picturesque aspect of mountains that science concerns itself, 

 but with their physical examination. If I have lingered 

 too long on my preamble I can only plead as an excuse 

 that a love of one's subject is no bad qualification for deal- 

 ing with it, and that it has tempted me to endeavour to 

 show you grounds for believing that a love of mountains 

 is no modern affectation, but a feeling as old and as wide- 

 spread as humanity. 



Their scientific investigation has naturally been of com- 

 paratively modern date. There are a few passages about 

 the effects of altitude, there are orographical descriptions 

 more or less accurate in the authors of antiquity. But for 

 attempts to explain the origin of mountains, to investigate 

 and account for the details of their structure, we shall find 

 little before the notes of Leonardo da Vinci, that marvellous 

 man who combined, perhaps, more than anyone who has 

 ever lived the artistic and the scientific mind. His ascent 

 of Monte Boso about 15 11, a mountain which may be found 

 under this name on the Italian ordnance map on the spur 

 separating Val Sesia and the Biellese, was the first ascent 

 by a physical observer. Gesner with all his mountain 

 enthusiasm found a scientific interest in the Alps mainly 

 if not solely in their botany. 



The phenomenon which first drew men of science to 

 Switzerland was the Grindelwald glaciers — " miracles of 

 Nature " they called them. Why these glaciers in par- 

 ticular, you may ask, when there are so many in the Alps? 

 The answer is obvious. Snow and ice on the " mountain 

 tops that freeze " are no miracle. But when two great 

 tongues of ice were found thrusting themselves down among 

 meadows and corn and cottages, upsetting barns and cover- 

 ing fields and even the marble quarries from which the 

 citizens of Bern dug their mantelpieces, there was obviously 

 something outside the ordinary processes of Nature, and 

 therefore miraculous. 



Swiss correspondents communicated with our own Royal 

 Society the latest news as to the proceedings of these un- 

 natural . ice-monsters, while the wise men of Zurich and 

 Bern wrote lectures on them. Glacier theories began. 

 Early in the eighteenth century Hottinger, Cappeller, 

 Scheuchzer, that worthy man who got members of our Royal 

 Society to pay for his pictures of frying dragons, contributed 

 their quota of crude speculation. But it was not until 1741 

 that Mont Blanc and its glaciers were brought into notoriety 

 by our young countrymen, Pococke and Windham, and 

 became an attraction to the mind and an object to the 

 ambition of the student whose name was destined to be 

 associated with them. Horace Benedict de Saussure, born 

 of a scientific family, the nephew of Bonnet, the Genevese 

 botanist and philosopher, who has become known to the 

 world as a mountaineer and the climber of Mont Blanc, 

 came twenty years later. In truth he was far more of a 

 mountain traveller and a scientific observer, a geological 

 student, than a climber. When looking at his purple silk 

 frock-coat (carefully preserved in his country house on the 

 shore of the Lake of Geneva), one realises the difference 

 between the man who climbed Mont Blanc in that garment 

 and the modern gymnast, who thinks himself far excellence 

 the mountaineer. 



De Saussure did not confine himself to Savoy or to one 

 group, he wandered far and wide over the Alpine region, 

 and the four volumes of his " Voyages " contain, besides 

 the narratives of his sojourn on the Col du G^ant and ascent 

 of Mont Blanc, a portion of the fruit of these wanderings. 



The reader who would appreciate De Saussure 's claim as 

 the founder of the Scientific Exploration of Mountains must, 

 however, be referred to the List of Agenda on questions 

 calling for investigation placed at the end of his last volume. 



