32 Guyot on Carl Bitter. 



and labor, may be easily conceived. Switzerland and the 

 gigantic fabric of the Alps, which he visited again and again 

 until a few years before his death, furnished to his plastic 

 and vivid imagination the most accomplished type of moun- 

 tain scenery, with which to compare all the other grand sys- 

 tems of our Globe. The careful study of Italy and Eome, 

 that classical soil of history and of art, clothed with the truth- 

 fulness of life his conceptions of the past ages, and gave 

 him a deep intuition of the adaptedness of the beautiful cli- 

 mate, of the admirable nature, and the remarkable structure of 

 the peninsular lands which surround the Mediterranean Sea 

 for developing the brilliant flower of the civilization of the an- 

 cient world. Without these rich intuitions derived directly 

 from Nature, says Bitter himself in the Introduction to his 

 " Erdkunde," his work would not have been undertaken, as 

 without Humboldt's labors, it could not have been performed. 

 This remark clearly tells the high value that he attached to 

 these personal experiences. 



In every country that he visited he formed an intimate 

 acquaintance with the leading minds of the time. During his 

 protracted stay in Geneva, that scientific metropolis of Switzer- 

 land, he enjoyed familiar intercourse with the most eminent 

 men of that school. De Saussure, the model scientific travel- 

 ler and physicist of European fame, had just died, but A. 

 Pictet, De Candolle, and many others remained. The inti- 

 mate and fruitful friendship which soon united him to the first, 

 no doubt contributed, together with the natural beauties of 

 that privileged country, to cause Kitter to look upon his so- 

 journ in Geneva as a bright spot in his life. 



But of all men with whom Bitter met at this period of his 

 life, none seems to have made a deeper, a more lasting impres- 

 sion upon him than Pestalozzi, the far-famed reformer of pop- 

 ular education. Bitter went to visit him for a few hours in 

 1807, in Yverdun, at that time the place of his residence and 

 remained there for months. Pestalozzi's sympathetic nature 

 found in Bitter's soul a full response. Bitter's letters to him 

 copies of some of which happen to be in my possession, are full 

 of expressions of gratitude and of the tender regard of a son for 

 a respected and beloved father, and of admiration for the fun- 

 damental idea on which rests his method of teaching. His 

 life-size portrait stood in Bitter's library. To him and to 

 Gutsmuths, his fatherly teachers, as he calls them, and not to 

 some high patron, he inscribes the first volume of his General 

 Geography, as a token of his reverence and heartfelt gratitude. 



