The Alps Part 8

The easily accessible alps are grazed by cattle. Highest alps whither cattle cannot go, or where frequent precipices surround the beasts with danger, are reserved for sheep and goats. Goat-alps are sometimes islands in the midst of glaciers, as, for instance, those at the foot of the Breithorn and the Twins along the south side of the main Gorner Glacier. Oftenest the alps grazed by sheep and goats are high up in the immediate vicinity of the snow-line, little patches of gra.s.s in a wilderness of rocks, or broken up by precipices. Some great gra.s.sy places at the ordinary cattle-alp level are so isolated by rock-walls that cattle cannot be taken to them with safety. Large flocks of sheep will then be found there. Such, for example, is the Muttenalp above Thierfehd in the Todi district, which is grazed by some 1500 or 2000 sheep. A single shepherd looks after them, and is almost entirely cut off from the lower world throughout the long summer months. The alp in question lies in a hollow of the hills, with terraced slopes rising like an amphitheatre from a gra.s.sy hollow, only accessible from below by a giddy path. There would be gra.s.s enough here for many cattle if the path could be cheaply improved.

Nothing in the Alps is more lonely and forlorn in aspect than are these high shepherds' huts. They are always wretchedly built. The lads or men that occupy them are the poorest of their village and the worst clad. In an alp where cheese is made there is plenty of work to fill every hour of the day; but a shepherd who lives aloft and does not have to drive his flock back to the village every day, finds time hanging heavily on his hands, and acquires a forlorn expression that matches his attire, his surroundings, and the miserable weather which so often envelops him.

Those of us who climbed among out-of-the-way parts of the Alps in the seventies or earlier often had to take shelter for the night in shepherds' huts, and very uncomfortable they were. But modern climbers hardly know that such refuges exist.

One such hut I well remember at the head of the Ridnaunthal in Tirol. Now there are no less than three luxurious climbers' huts built beside or near the glacier further up. The old shepherd's hut has fallen to decay. Only a fragment of one of its walls was left when I pa.s.sed the place recently. Modern comforts, however, are not all clear gain. To sleep a night in the old upper Agels alp was not a comfortable experience, but it had its recompenses. The rough stone-built cabin was perfectly in harmony of aspect with its surroundings, as a club-hut is not. Built out of the stones that lay around, its crannies stuffed with moss, its roof formed of slabs and sods, it seemed a part of the mountain landscape, a natural growth rather than an artificial structure. A philosopher, ignorant of the conditions of life there, might have argued that the hut had been invested with an intentional protective coloration and form. The hut was hard to find, hard even to see when you were looking straight that way. It stood in a gorge upon a sloping gra.s.sy shelf, clutching a dark rock-cliff, as though it feared to slide down and tumble over into the roaring torrent. There was another dark cliff over against it, and the gorge curved round, so that you could not see far, either up or down. Everywhere the dark rock-cliffs shut it in, and only the minimum of sky was visible overhead, as it were poised on cliffs. There was always a bitter wind blowing when I was there, and always the river roaring, and its spray rising to the door of the hut like a wet cloud.

The entry was by a low and narrow door, and there was a tiny window beside it. A little pa.s.sage or track led from the door down the room to the fire at the far end, where cheese was made of goat's milk. On one side of the pa.s.sage was a bed of hay, retained by a board. On the other were some shelves fastened against the wall. The door did not fit, and the walls were full of holes through which the wind whistled. It was indeed a wretched shelter; but we slept well enough within it, rolled up in our wraps. The hospitality of the simple peasant was as hearty, his welcome as warm, as his means were exiguous. No one sleeps in these goat-herd huts any more. Climbers have provided better accommodation for themselves, but in so doing they have lost that intimate touch with the life of the mountain-dwellers which a former generation learned to enjoy.

When now we speak of alps, it is the cattle alps that are generally intended and understood. These cattle alps are of all sizes and descriptions, large and small, relatively high planted or relatively low. Some, like Moser's alp above Randa, belong to an individual and afford grazing only for a few beasts; but most are the property of the commune and are worked co-operatively for the benefit of all the cattle-owners who may wish to send their cows aloft to graze. Most alps are divided into two levels, a lower and a higher. The cattle are driven to the lower alp for the beginning and end of the summer season, to the higher for the middle weeks. Every such alp must be supplied with the necessary buildings for the accommodation of the herdsmen and cheese-makers, and generally for the cattle also, though in some parts of Switzerland the cattle are left out in the open throughout the whole summer season. Pigs are usually kept at a cattle alp to consume the refuse of the whey. An old woman once told me that pigs are "the fourth child of milk," the other three being b.u.t.ter, serac, and cheese. What with the coming and going of the cattle, the pigs, and the herdsmen, the milking at dawn and eve, and the cheese-making that follows, a cattle alp is a very busy place. Some are better equipped than others, but in almost all one finds a shake-down on hay, a fire, and good shelter against all possible inclemencies of the weather. The immediate neighbourhood of the huts is liable to be dirty, especially when there are pigs, and at certain seasons there is a plague of flies in the hot hours of sunshine. But, as a rule, these discomforts infest only a very small area, and it is enough to pa.s.s beyond that to escape them.

Now that the throng of climbers is so great near the fashionable centres, cattle alps are unsuited to accommodate them, and club-huts or even hotels have been built for their service. Yet even now a climber who quits the beaten track often has an opportunity of spending a night under the conditions which were universal in the days of the Alpine explorers. To climb the mountains without a.s.sociating with the folk whose lives are pa.s.sed upon their lower slopes is to lose half the pleasure of mountaineering, as I shall attempt to prove in the next chapter. Valley-life is not widely different from life in the plains. It is the life on the alps that is characteristic of the mountain-dweller.

There the peasant learns sureness of foot. There he grows familiar with the aspect of the high peaks and the glaciers. There, as the years pa.s.s by, he becomes differentiated from the man of the plains. No one can really acquire the mountain-spirit who has had no contact with the people of the alps. That spirit does not reside in the club-huts, one of which is already in telephonic communication with a Stock Exchange--a foretaste of what the future will bring to others. The great charm and recreative power of mountain-wandering arose from the fact that the climber cut himself off from the life of the Cities of the Plain and exchanged it for the life of the hillside. He came into communication with another set of men, with other habits, other ideals. Each year that pa.s.ses in the Alps makes that change less considerable and by so much the less salutary.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 56. CHALETS AND CHURCH. RIEDERALP.]

The crowd of holiday visitors to Switzerland tends to settle in the high pasture region more than was the habit thirty years ago. Formerly hotels flourished in the valley-bottoms, in villages or close to them. Now they are built with ever-increasing frequency upon the alps. The Riffel and Murren led the way. Such hotels now exist by dozens, and more are built every year. Round Zermatt there are smaller or larger inns, about 3000 feet higher than the village, in many directions. But to live in one of these high hotels is yet to live the normal life of hotel-frequenting man. The scenery is changed, but not the human medium. It is the inevitable consequence of Alpine vulgarisation which drives the true lover of nature and of the freedom of simple life further afield.

To know what the high pastures are really like, what kind of a foreground they naturally provide for an outlook on the world of mountains, you must not go to the modern Triftalp inn or the Schwarz See, but rather to such unspoiled places as the alps of Veglia or of By, both glorious expanses of wide pasturage, which no crowd as yet has attempted to invade, or is likely to attempt, thanks to their situations, remote from the great tripping highways. There you may obtain simple accommodation for a few fine days, and wander as you please over the undulating meadows, with no sound to break the stillness save the rustling of the breeze, the laughter of the waters, and the musical clang of cow-bells more or less remote.

It would be easy to divide the alps into many cla.s.ses and to discourse of their characters from many points of view, but there are two main kinds of high pastures, differentiated from one another by their situations, which will naturally occur to every lover of mountains. One kind covers the floor and lower slopes of some high-planted valley; the other lies on some open shelf or convex curving mountain-knee. The first sort is recondite; the other displays itself to the world and commands extensive views. The impression they produce is very different. One is wild and gloomy; the other gay and brilliant. One has to be sought; the other summons you from afar.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 57. EVENING IN ZERMATT. The promenade after dinner--a scene more reminiscent of Earl's Court than the "heart of the Alpine world."]

The high gra.s.sy valleys are not so common as the knees, nor do I at this moment recall one of them that is likely to be known by the general run of my readers, though there are plenty scattered about in all sorts of corners of the Alpine range. Perhaps the Tasch alp will do for type, though compared with many it is relatively open and accessible. There are better examples near the Dent du Midi, which may be more widely known than I imagine. The ascent to such an alp may lie straight up the valley, first through the forest, afterwards through glades and gra.s.sy openings, often of singular loveliness. At last you come to the stunted and scattered outliers of the forest, pathetic trees all crooked and misformed, bending away from the habitual wind and stretching forth angular arms after it as it hurries by. When these are left behind, the open gra.s.s-land spreads before and around you, seamed with radiating paths, that start away as with a most definite intention, but soon divide and subdivide, leading in fact nowhither.

If it is early in the season and you are ahead of the cattle, the gra.s.s may be relatively tall and the flowers countless in number and variety.

You will wade not ankle-but knee-deep in them, and the air will be filled with delicious perfume. Then indeed it is good to wander at this level. It is essentially the level for wandering. You may go as well in one direction as another. The views are in every direction and from every place. There are no points to ascend, no goals to reach. Now it is a fold of the ground, some little hollow with a pool, that attracts the eye; now it is an outcrop of rock; now some gap ahead filled by a snow-peak; now some downward vista of forest or valley. Anywhere you may find entertainment. Anywhere you may be tempted to sit down and gaze around.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 58. BERN FROM THE NORTH-WEST. Spire of Cathedral against the dimly seen mountains of the Bernese Oberland.]

The higher you go the shorter becomes the gra.s.s, but it is all the more succulent. As the season advances the flowers fade. But the alp nevertheless retains its charm. The kind of alp now specially under consideration, the hollow sequestered high pasture, is often round some corner, cut off from distant and especially from downward views. Perhaps a portion of a snowy peak can be seen over a shoulder of the surrounding foreground. Oftenest even the snows are shut out, and the vision is limited by enclosing slopes or walls of shattered rock, where snow lies late in c.h.i.n.ks and crannies. Such places have a wild and at first sight a forbidding aspect. But we grow to appreciate them and find delight in them as the novelty wears off. They have the dignity, the solemnity of solitude. Such elements of beauty as they possess are simple. They do not overwhelm the imagination by imposing shapes, nor astonish and puzzle it by complexities of colouring. Such places are best seen in dull weather when distant views are not to be had, and the eye has to take its pleasure in gazing upon what is near at hand. Then the brown rocks emerging from the gra.s.s and embroidered with lichens have their chance. In some places, where water habitually trickles over them, they are quite black and glossy. After all, there is variety enough of colour to be found about them, if one takes the trouble to look. Moreover, how much entertainment is to be found in the really intricate modelling of the gra.s.s-covered surfaces. Far different are they from mere low level fields which long ploughing has invested with a continuous curvature like that of a _neve_ basin. The gra.s.sy alps possess a complex accidentation of form. They bend and curve with an exhaustless variety.

They burst, as it were like a breaking wave, against the rocks that perforate the gra.s.s. How many shelves and islands gra.s.s covers among the rocks! What picturesque corners it makes! What sheltered nooks! What attractive camping grounds! What charming sites for picnics, aloof from the ways of the crowd! In these remote and solitary places it is charming to while away the hours of an idle day, seeing nothing that has name or fame, following no track, accomplishing no expedition, no walk even that can be identified, yet finding everywhere something to look at, some entertainment for the disenc.u.mbered mind.

It is, however, the high and open alps, lying on the slopes or laps of the great hills, that are the favourite places with visitors of all sorts. Here the variety is so great, the opportunities of enjoyment are so many, the possible beauties so mult.i.tudinous, that it is almost impossible to indicate them in a brief s.p.a.ce. Who that has climbed much, or merely wandered much, through Alpine regions has not an exhaustless store of memories of these open, far-commanding alps? What a variety of reminiscences arise when the thoughts are turned towards this belt of the mountains! It forms a stage in the ascent and again in the descent of every peak and pa.s.s; and it is the special arena for the "off-day."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 59. LOOKING DOWN THE VAL FORMAZZA FROM TOSA.]

My own keenest enjoyments of the open alps are a.s.sociated with two examples, not, I fear, very widely known--the Fontanella alp above Valtournanche, and the alp over which one descends from Rutor towards La Thuille. Both may be described as staged or terraced alps. They lie on a series of shelves, separated from one another by walls or steep descents. For aught I know, they may be dull to ascend; but to descend they are of marvellous beauty. This beauty is greatly enhanced by the waters that fall in cascades from step to step, and lie in pools, or race along over the successive flats. The waters and the meadows form foreground to the loveliest distances. There are undulations and slopes of green in front; green slopes to right and left; and then the sight leaps across a blue valley to the opposite woods and upper hillsides crowned with rocky crests, above which other ridges rise and peaks appear, till far away soars some snowy giant into the serene sky. In the descent we must turn this way and that--now facing a waterfall, now going down some recondite gully, now down some outward-looking slope.

And always, presently, comes the flat meadow on a lower shelf, and the call to tarry upon it and look back at the waterfall, or sit beside the torrent, or watch the reflections in a quiet pool. There are several examples of these lovely staged alps in Ticino, as you go down from the Basodino towards Bignasco. Wherever you find them they are fascinating.

They always seem greener on the flats than any other alp. Their picturesqueness has in it an element of the scenic. The arrangement seems to have been made for effect.

There is another kind of far-commanding open alp, that all mountaineers must often have enjoyed. It is a long, relatively narrow slope or level of high pasture that lies horizontally between two cliffs or rocky belts. Such an alp lies above Zermatt to the south-westward, along the foot of the Unter Gabelhorn, round which it curves, so that as you walk along it your direction gradually changes from about south to west. It begins high up on the flank of the Zermatt valley, and it is carried round into the valley of Z'mutt, always at the same high level.

There is no lovelier walk in that fine neighbourhood than this; for the foreground is always a slope dropping away to an invisible cliff at your feet, so that the eye constantly enjoys a delightful visual leap across the neighbouring valley to the great pyramid of the Matterhorn, or the more distant snowy range that ends in Monte Rosa.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 60. IN THE VAL BAVONA. River Bed filled by avalanche.

Basodino in the distance.]

The extent and development of the alpine belt vary greatly, not merely in different regions, but in different parts of the same region. On descending some mountains, rocky debris are found to cover a large area of undulating ground, and then the gra.s.s slopes plunge steeply to the forest, and are quickly traversed. On others the gra.s.s reaches high and undulates slowly down, so that you may be walking over it for hours before you reach the trees. These lazily sloping alps are most charming when rightly used and approached, though to the climber, eager to gain the snowy heights, their extent may seem tedious, especially when they have to be traversed in the dark.

There are some magnificent alps along the north side of the Rhone valley above Sierre. The slopes that support them rise rapidly from the valley with an equal and continuous slant. When those are surmounted there comes a great area of undulating land which begins amongst the trees but soon opens out to the sky and stretches far back towards Wildhorn, Wildstrubel, and the rest. On these great alps there lie many small lakes, and all the alpine region hereabouts is very diversified, and filled with foregrounds of all characters and kinds of picturesqueness--and then what distant views they have to set off, for across the Rhone valley to the southward is all the splendour and extent of the Pennine range, with Mischabel or Weisshorn standing out in front in overpowering magnificence.

Perhaps we shall be held justified in claiming that the views from the region of the high pastures are their chief charm, rather than the nearer views upon them. Certain it is that most of the great peaks are best seen from the alpine level, and that the favourite views of them, the characteristically memorable and popularly best remembered views, are from alps. Such is the view of Mont Blanc from the Flegere, of the Matterhorn from the Riffel alp, of the Weisshorn from the Tasch alp, of the Mischabelhorner from above Saas-Fee. The spectator stands high enough and not too high; he can be near enough at this level and yet not too near. The mountain still retains its individuality, its existence separate from its neighbours, and yet can be seen as a whole. A little nearer and it begins to disclose the details of its structure, whilst its ma.s.s fills a larger area than can be embraced at a glance. A little further away and the mountain is only beheld as one of several, part of a larger ma.s.s, a component element of another effect.

From the alpine level you look down as well as up. The depth beneath and the height above may be, or appear to be, approximately equal.

Moreover, the distance to which the sight penetrates, the area over which it ranges, bears some moderate proportion to the size of the mountain-ma.s.ses included in it. In the view from a high peak, visible distances are so great, the area embraced is so vast, the peaks visible appear to be so countless, that each of them may shrink into individual insignificance. It is the mult.i.tude of peaks rather than the ma.s.s of any, their abundance rather than the form of any, that causes the overwhelming impression upon the spectator. But in views from the alpine level there is a greater simplicity and a no less effective moderation.

The mountains in sight are few, and of them one is sure to be most prominently placed, one will be central if not unique; and that mountain, in the typical view from an alp, will be seen from base to summit, not merely its superstructure of rock and snow, but its wide foundation also, reaching down into the depths of the valley and spreading broadly with all needful amplitude.

It is not thus that mountains are beheld from the valleys. As you traverse the whole Vispthal from Visp to Zermatt, you do indeed behold the summits of most of the great flanking peaks from successive points on the valley floor, yet it is only the expert who can recognise them, or tell which white fragment far aloft is the top of a great mountain and which are the mere shoulders of lower b.u.t.tressing ridges. The knees of the hills hide their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and generally also their h.o.a.ry heads from the view of one who pa.s.ses along at their feet. If you would behold a great mountain as a whole, it is from the knees or the gra.s.sy lap of some other that you must look. Foreshortened foundations are then withdrawn; each component part of the whole vast structure takes its proper place and is seen to fulfil its own function. b.u.t.tresses stand forward and widen out below; high valleys can be traced into the heart of the ma.s.s; minor peaks are duly subordinated. The mountain, in fact, can be seen as a whole. It is thus you behold the Mischabel from the alp at the base of the Weisshorn or the Fletschhorn; thus the Matterhorn from the Riffelalp; thus the Jungfrau from Murren. A true instinct has selected and made such points of view famous.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 61. IN THE VAL D'AOSTA. The Mont Blanc group of mountains hidden in clouds.]

We have left ourselves little s.p.a.ce to discuss the value of the high pastures as an element in the mountain landscape, parts of the scene to be looked at, not positions to gaze from. That their value in this respect also is very great must be obvious enough, for in most mountain views the gra.s.sy belt fills the largest part. Of course it is not the most impressive. We look at the mountains, or at some mountain, some glacier, waterfall, or cliff, and make it the centre of our observation.

As a rule, however, except when we stand in the midst of the snowy world, the mountain that is centrally gazed at does not occupy so large a part of the field of view as is filled by the gra.s.sy expanse at its foot. The gra.s.sy alp, in fact, generally bears to a mountain the relation that the background does to a Madonna in a picture. Or we may say that alp and sky are the fabric on which the mountain is embroidered.

In many parts of the world the gra.s.sy belt is absent from the ranges, and its loss is greatly felt. Peaks rising out of slopes of debris and sand have a grandeur of their own, but it is not the normal grandeur of the Alps. In some other ranges the tree-level leads at once to rocks and snow. It is the merit of the Alps that a broad belt of delicately modelled gra.s.s-land almost invariably intervenes between forest and snow. This gra.s.sy belt covers the wide substructure of the peaks. Above it is the realm of frost, of split rock and jagged forms. But as soon as the gra.s.s-level is reached suave outlines and rounded surfaces, broadening as they descend, take the place of the accidented forms above. The value of the contrast will be apparent to all. Small and very correct little models of the Matterhorn in bronze are sold for letter-weights, in which the culminating pyramid alone is given, planted on a rectangular stone plinth. They are interesting mementoes. But compare one of them with a view of the mountain as seen from the Riffelalp, rising above the long bulging gra.s.s-covered slopes that descend almost to Zermatt, and you will at once realise how important an element in the general impressiveness of the mountain are those lower slopes, and that not merely for their form but for their rich coloration.

The green of the alps is the true key-note of Swiss colour. To it all the rest are subordinate. By contrast with it, rather than with the remote transparence of the air-submerged rocks, the snows manifest their whiteness and the sky its blue. From season to season of the year it changes its tint, between the shrill green of opening spring and the amber of autumn. It changes likewise from hour to hour beneath the varied slanting of the sunshine. How velvet-dark seems the alpine belt at night when the moon is high! Even in the twilight you cannot tell that these slopes are gra.s.s-covered, till

"Under the opening eye-lids of the morn"

"the high lawns appear." At first the sunshine lies upon them in patches, like carpets of gold on a rich green floor. The sunlit area increases as the gold itself changes into green, whilst the dominant note of colour rises in the scale. Long before mid-day the broad belt attains its unity of effect, and divides the dark forests and deep valleys from the radiant heights. Most of us, who delight in mountain scenery, praise this peak or that, this broken glacier, wide-spreading snow-field, or intricacy of splintered ridges, forgetting that it is often the un.o.btrusive, tenderly modelled alps below, that endow these high eminences with half their charm. The beauty of a scene depends upon the harmony of all its parts. It is well sometimes to fix attention on those that seldom insist upon it for themselves.

NOTE TO PAGE 229.--Mr. Coolidge informs me that the Muttenalp belongs, not to the Thierfehd, but to Brigels in the Grisons, and is reached over the Kisten Pa.s.s. That is why the path down to the Linththal is so bad.

CHAPTER XI

THE HUMAN INTEREST

It has often occurred to me, when travelling over glaciers and among mountains, seldom or never before visited by men, how much the impression they produce upon a first spectator loses by lacking the human interest. Of course some stray huntsman or dumb and forgotten native may have been there before, but if the fact is unknown to us, it is as though he had not existed.

When climbing Illimani, the great Bolivian mountain, the human interest accompanied us up the lower slopes. Here were old fields, old irrigation channels, even ancient ruined huts. Higher up we still had the memory of former adventurers to keep our hearts warm; but when we had forced the great rock-cliff that guards the peak, and were upon the upper snow-field, we were, so far as we knew, in an unvisited world. There did indeed exist an ancient tradition that once, long long ago, an Aymara Indian had gone aloft, seeking the abode of the G.o.ds, and that having found it, he was taken by the G.o.ds to themselves and never returned to his people; but the tale was too slender a thread to form a sensible connection between us and the world of bygone humanity. The climb took us over one high peak, then across a great snow-field and up the highest peak. We revisited and rested on the lower peak in the descent. While there resting, I dropped my hand on the rock beside me, and s.n.a.t.c.hed it away, feeling something soft and clammy, a kind of texture instinctively perceived to be strange at such a place.

Looking to see what the substance was, I found it to be a fragment of goat-hair rope, such as the Indians of the Bolivian plateau have used from time immemorial. Instantly the old legend was recalled to my remembrance. It was true! The Indian had actually been here where I was sitting. Here he rested. Hence he looked abroad over the country of his birth--probably his last long look on any view in this world; for he never returned, and must presently have lost his life in some hidden creva.s.se. The thought of that nameless one animated the scene, and enriched the emotions we experienced with a new interest. I thought now of how he had felt with this great prospect spread abroad before him. I wondered whether his G.o.ds had appeared to him, whether he had beheld visions and dreamed dreams, and what those visions were like. There beneath him he had perhaps gazed for the last time on his birthplace, and identified the little hut that was his home. Did he know that he would never return? Did he think about his friends so far below and wonder whether they were looking up towards him? Did he promise himself great future fame in his tribe? Did he dream that they would identify him with the very G.o.ds? For the remainder of our resting-time the whole view was animated by thoughts of this man. It is the best instance I can cite of the value of a human interest in giving sentiment to a mountain scene.

The same lesson was taught me by the Spitsbergen mountains, amongst which I spent two long summer seasons. The coast of Spitsbergen is rich with the tales and traditions of human achievement and suffering. Few places have been the scene of tragedies so numerous and so long drawn out. In few have more dramatic adventures occurred and more varied enterprises been undertaken. But the interior of Spitsbergen, and especially its mountain ranges, had scarcely been penetrated before. The mountains beyond reach of the sh.o.r.e were unclimbed, with one exception.

The landscapes were unknown to man. It was necessary to spend some time in these solitary places to realise how much they lost by this aloofness. No peak possessed name or history. None had ever been the centre of any one's landscape. None had measured mid-day for any toiler, or served as reckoning point for the close of his labour. No villagers had ever imagined those Arctic glaciers as the home of any G.o.ds or the paradise of any heroes. They had never found their way into ancient tale or legend. They had never been worshipped or sung by man, historic or pre-historic. They were just elemental lumps of the earth, with no more human sentiment attached to them than to any dozen stones you may gather off a heap and make mountains of in your imagination.

Pick up any fragment of rock you please and place it upon your table.

Look closely at it and persuade yourself that it is not six inches but 20,000 feet high. On that a.s.sumption search for routes up it. Examine its faces and its ridges, its cracks and its gullies. You will be able to climb about it in a day-dream, to have accidents upon it, to succeed or to fail in various ascents. But who will care to "hear tell" of your proceedings? And yet, apart from geographical and geological considerations, which are in fact historical, any casual mountain is no more interesting in its essence than your stone. There are hundreds of thousands of mountains in the world. What intrinsic interest has one of them more than another, from a climber's point of view, except in two respects, the difficulty of the climb and the human interest? But the difficulty is of no account, for if that is what you want you can find it on Scafell, and need not wander to seek it.

No! it is above all the human interest that enn.o.bles a peak and makes the ascent of it desirable. It is to climb an elevation that men have seen; to climb a peak that has been named, that has been looked at for centuries by the inhabitants at its base, that travellers have pa.s.sed by and observed, that has a place in the knowledge and memory of men. If there were a great mountain in full view of London or Rome, how much more interesting it would be to climb than some nameless lump in Central Asia, like K2, that was never within view of any abode of men.

This was one of the main attractions of the unclimbed Alps to early explorers of the high levels. Mont Blanc was known of old. How many generations of men had looked from Thun at the Oberland giants and told stories about them. How much the famed devils and dragons added to the fascination of the Matterhorn. The Alps had looked down upon the march of armies and the flux of peoples for uncounted thousands of years.

Their solitudes were peopled by the dreams of all the generations that had pa.s.sed by them or dwelt amongst them. The subliminal consciousness that this was so, counted for much in the strong attraction that drew the pioneers aloft.