618 REPORT—1904. 
In the annals of art it would be easy 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 in Art,’ hasshown 
how many great painters depicted in their backgrounds 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 my hearers may feel 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. Iam content to remind you that the 
love of mountains and the desire to climb them are distinct tastes, They 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 is generally 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, Kinsiedeln, Pesio, the Grande Chartreuse— 
were seized on by recluses; the Alpine 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, Aineas Silvius (Pius II.) records the attractions, for it is in the Jura, 
not the Alps; but Pfifers, where wounded warriors went to be healed, 
was a scene of dissipation, and the waters of St. Moritz were vaunted as 
superseding wine. I may be excused, since I wrote this particular passage myself 
a good many years ago, for quoting a few sertences bearing on this point from 
‘ Murray’s Handbook to Switzerland.’ In the sixteenth century fifty treatises deal- 
ing 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 baths. 
In 1501 Matthew Schinner, the famous Prince Bishop of Sion, built ‘a magnificent 
hotel’ at Leukerbad, to which the wealthy were carried up in panniers on the back 
of mules. Brieg, Gurnigel, near Bern, the Baths of Masino, Tarasp, and 
Pfafers were also popular inearly 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 dealing 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 widespread as 
humanity. 
Their scientific investigation has naturally been of comparatively 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 1511, a moun- 
tain 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 Grindel- 
wald glaciers—‘ miracles of Nature’ they called them. Why these glaciers in 
particular, 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 covering 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, 
