CHAPTER IV

ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF ALPS

Relatively few Alpine climbers of the present generation know the Alps. They know a district or two, perhaps, though even that amount of knowledge is not so common as might be expected. It were truer to say that the normal present-day climber knows a special kind of climbing and only cares to go where that is to be found. The popular kind of climbing to-day is rock-climbing. The new mountaineer is a specialist rock-climber. Having once fallen in love with rock-climbing, he devotes himself to it, becomes more and more skilful, hunts out harder and harder climbs, and only cares to go where those are to be had. He has discovered that England is not ill-provided with such scrambles, if you know where to look for them; and he knows. He may be found at Easter and Whitsuntide in recondite gullies in Wales, the Lakes, Derbyshire, or Scotland. In the summer he is to be looked for among the Chamonix Aiguilles or in the Dolomites, or, if at other centres, then on the more difficult rock routes. Naturally a small area suffices him. It is not mountains he seeks but climbs. A single peak will afford him several, a small group might even occupy him for a lifetime of scrambling holidays.

He does not care for easy ways. He hates snow-pounding. A glacier route does not attract him unless it be difficult. Hence his knowledge even of his own particular district or districts is likely to be incomplete. He is not drawn to travel far afield. A wanderer by nature he cannot be; nor is the wandering instinct likely to be developed in him. He does not care for all sorts and conditions of Alps, but for one sort. Only where that kind is to be found is he attracted to go. All present-day mountaineers, of course, are not of this type; but this is the type that present-day mountaineering tends to develop; and of this type the output is considerable.

The old generation of climbers--the founders of the Alpine Club--men who were active in the sixties and seventies, were essentially wanderers. The craft of climbing was less an object of pursuit to them than the exploration of the Alps. Probably the reason was that they had the Alps to explore, and theirs was the pleasure of exploration which we have not. The Alps have all been explored before our coming. The old men had not even decent maps of the snowy regions to go by. No one knew what was round most upper corners, or whither passes led, or how you could get by high-level routes from place to place. It was a great delight to solve such problems, and it led climbers to become geographers and to interest themselves in the general structure and topography of the Alps. No such problems now remain to be solved. Admirable maps exist, solving them all. The game of exploration is played out in Central Europe. He that would take a hand in it now must wander further afield.

Yet even now to know the Alps would be a life-work for any one. To know them, like the writer of a Climbers' Guide, is more than a life-work. For the Alps cover a much larger area than most people realise. Ordinary persons think of the Alps and Switzerland as almost identical, yet less than a third of the Alpine area is in Switzerland. By the Alps I mean the whole mountain area between the Mediterranean and the plains of North Italy, France, and Northern Europe, from where they begin at an arbitrary point of offshoot from the Apennines, called the Colle di Tenda, to where they fade out along a curved line, which may be vaguely described as joining Vienna to Fiume. They lie therefore in the five countries, Italy, France, Switzerland, Bavaria, and Austria.

Very few people indeed have any considerable general knowledge of the whole of this great area, or indeed even any sense of the size of it and the main features of its chief divisions. I spent one summer in the attempt to traverse round along the curved middle line of it from the Col di Tenda at one end to the neighbourhood of Vienna at the other, and after walking approximately a thousand miles, including zigzags, I only reached the termination of the snowy ridges, but by no means that of the forest-covered eastern outliers. That journey, however, taught me how much there is to know, and enables me to realise how little I have actually learnt of the contents and character of the Alps as a whole. This one fact, however, it demonstrated to me: that the several divisions and subdivisions of the Alps contain varieties of scenery of the utmost diversity. Thus a man who knows only the great ranges of the Central Alps must still regard himself as ignorant of the Alps at large. Not only are there all sorts and conditions of peaks, but there are all sorts and conditions of types of scenery, and between these types there is as much divergence as there is between a Kentish landscape and a view from the Gorner Grat.

In this chapter I by no means propose to describe all the regions and types of scenery that the Alps contain, but only to mention a few of them as specimens of far more numerous other types, which there is no space here to include or of which I am ignorant. A scientific writer would divide these types of scenery according to the geological nature of their upbuilding and substance. For instance, he would broadly contrast the limestone with the slaty-crystalline areas, and show how scenery and structure match. I propose to adopt no such rational method, but to roam at random through the region of old memories, and refer as chance directs to such types of scenery and such local varieties as happen to suggest themselves in turn for description or brief analysis.

Literally speaking, "alps" are high pastures where cattle go to graze in summer-time. We here use the name with no such meaning, but to designate the mountains in general. The Alps, _par excellence_, to the normal man are the great groups of snowy peaks in the heart of the Alpine area. Let us in the first place confine our attention to them. In popular estimation these groups are the following, the Dauphiny, Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa, Oberland, and Engadine masses. In the second rank come others we will refer to later.

_Place au geant!_ First among all is Mont Blanc and its satellites, pre-eminent in size, pre-eminent also in dignity. For this group is really one buttressed mountain, and all its minor masses are supports to the central dome, like the semi-domes, vaulted porticoes and abutments of Hagia Sophia to the uplifted cupola. He who stands on the summit of the great mountain beholds that this is so. His position there is pre-eminent. No other neighbouring height rivals that which he occupies. The highest are many hundred feet below, and they are all obvious supporters and tributaries of Mont Blanc itself. It is only the yet smaller and remoter elevations that assert a claim to independence.

This pre-eminence of the central mass is the key-note of Mont Blanc scenery. Moreover the mountain is not merely pre-eminent in altitude, but in volume and simplicity of form. Its upper part is a great white dome, whereas the buttress-peaks are for the most part rocky pinnacles. The contrast between these slender, jagged supports and the reposeful majesty of the Calotte is a most picturesque feature and a very rare one, not repeated, so far as I remember, in any other part of the Alps. It dominates the scenery of the whole district. No doubt within the district there are views of great beauty and considerable comprehension, where Mont Blanc forms no part--such, for example, as the Montenvers view up the Mer de Glace--but the characteristic prospects contain Mont Blanc as their central and most important object. This is specially true of all the views from summits, a quality that distinguishes them from summit-views in other districts. Whatever Aiguille you stand upon, and whatever may have been the character of the scenery passed through on the way up, the moment you arrive upon the top, Mont Blanc assumes the predominance and all else takes second rank. The ordinary summit-view, the wide world over, is a panorama, in which the uninterrupted roving of the vision round the whole circuit is the chief charm. From a minor summit in the Mont Blanc region, the great mountain shuts out a large fraction of the distant panorama and attracts chief attention to itself. Of the other conspicuous beauties of this district, its glorious ice scenery, its astonishingly precipitous crags and slender needle-peaks, we shall take occasion to speak hereafter. In this place it is only the dominant note of each locality that calls for brief description.

From Mont Blanc we naturally pass to Monte Rosa and the Matterhorn. The fact that the two peaks call for co-ordinate attention, at once marks the dispersion of interest characteristic of the Pennine Alps. Indeed not two but nearly a dozen mountains in that group are of almost equal importance, each having votaries who prefer it to the rest. The Matterhorn, of course, is in its own way pre-eminent, if seen from certain points of view; but, when beheld from other summits around, it does not maintain an appearance of leadership. Monte Rosa from Macugnaga, the Dom and Taeschhorn from Saas, the Weisshorn from north or east, the Dent Blanche from the Triftjoch, are objects as imposing each in its own way as is the Matterhorn from Zermatt or the Riffelalp. That peak, as we shall hereafter take occasion to observe in more detail, surpasses them, and perhaps all the rock mountains in the world, in grace of outline from certain points of view. It likewise rejoices in a rare prestige, due to its tragic history and its geographical position. But to those who know it from all sides, and know its neighbours also, it is not the unique and dominating mountain of its district that it is popularly supposed to be. The Zermatt mountain area is probably best to be differentiated from the other great Alpine groups by the almost uniform magnificence and relative equality of its chief peaks. It resembles some splendid Venetian oligarchy as contrasted with monarchical Mont Blanc. The nobles of the Pennine Court with their satellites present greater variety, a more elaborate organisation, and a more varied historical record. Each seems worthy to be chief when beheld from a selected vantage point. Seen from elsewhere, each subordinates itself to some other. This is the region of large independent glaciers, of deep recesses, of noble passes from place to place. It is also specially rich in minor points of view about 10,000 feet high, and of good sites for hotels some 3,000 feet lower, where each possesses a specially fine outlook of its own, which it shares with no other. The dominant note of the district is grandeur; if it lacks anything, it is charm. This, in fact, is a stalwart group, which must be wandered over and inspected from many sides and along many routes. No "centre" reveals it. It is a place for walkers and climbers in the heyday of their vigour.

Turn we next to the Bernese Oberland, the queen district, if Mont Blanc is the king. The Oberland has always seemed to me to be the most graceful and romantic of the great Alpine masses. The very names of its peaks enshrine the poetry that the peasant-dwellers on their flanks learned from them in days long gone by. The Maiden, the Monk, the Ogre, the peak of Terror, and what not. And then how richly they roll off the tongue--Finsteraarhorn, Lauteraarhorn, Bluemlisalp, Strahleck! No other part of Switzerland can rival the Oberland for names--certainly not Zermatt with its Meadow-peak, Red-peak, Broad-peak, Black-peak, White-tooth, and the like feeble designations. Easily first for beauty and prestige among Oberland mountains is the peerless Jungfrau--but you must only see her from the north. Thence she is beheld, a most effulgent beauty, fair among the fairest mountain visions upon earth. The elegance of her form, displayed and emphasised by the white samite of her drapery, and beheld from the lake at her foot, abides in the memory of all who are privileged to behold her. Only one rival does she possess in the district, and that is not a mountain but a glacier, the Great Aletsch, greatest of all in the Alps, beautiful exceedingly to look down upon, beautiful in its middle course, and fairest of all in the wide expanses of its ample gathering ground. It subordinates to itself all the high surrounding peaks and renders them the mere rim of its cup. To a less degree magnificent, yet far finer than the general run of Alpine glaciers, are the other chief ice-rivers of the Oberland district, which thus becomes _par excellence_ the home of long glacier-passes, leading through great varieties of mountain scenery, and connecting centres relatively remote. The longest and finest glacier-traverse in the Alps is that which leads from the Grimsel to the Loetschen valley right through the heart of the range.

Dauphiny, compared with the Pennines and the Oberland, presents to one sensitive to mountain character more contrasts than similarities. For this is an austere region, which gathers itself up together and stands apart, away from natural through routes and the ordinary courses of the human tide. Its valleys are deep, sombre, and stony; its alpine pastures meagre; its forests few and thin. Its peaks hide themselves behind their own knees. He that would know them must search them out. But they reward the search. It is because of the steepness of their bases that they are so recondite, and that very steepness gives them a dignified character all their own. The Meije is their typical representative, a mountain of strangely complex sky-line and irregular shape, that supports its own private glaciers cut-off upon cliffs, and presents the climber with surprises round every corner. Few are the regular pyramids, fewer still the domed snow caps in the tangled complexity of this region, where Nature has impressed her chisel deeply, and has hewn out the great rock masses with unusual ruggedness.

Very different is the remote Engadine group, remarkable for the high level and broad expanse of the floor of its chief valley, where lake beyond lake reflects the summer sunshine and carries the white curtain of winter on its level frozen surface. A region, this, of fine forests and large expanses of rich grazing grounds, of picturesque torrents and smiling flower-strewn slopes. Its snowy group is little more than an appendage of minor importance to the general scenic attractions of the district. Two fine mountain cirques, defining the basins of two picturesque glaciers, are its dominant features, and in each cirque one peak shines forth pre-eminent. The scenery of these cirques, however, is not of any special character that calls for mention as distinguishing it from the scenery of the other great Alpine groups. The _note_ of the Engadine is not sounded there, but rather in the wide, lake-strewn valley itself, where the snow-crests count mainly as the silvery embellishment of its frame.

Climbers who have spent a season or two in each of these five groups may think that they know the Alps, but they will be greatly mistaken. Most of them, indeed, will admit that they cannot afford to neglect the Dolomites, and will at least intend to spend a season amongst them. From a scrambling point of view, if they are rock-climbers, they will be well rewarded, for Dolomite rock-climbing is a thing apart. Dolomite scenery is even more truly unique. Less grand than that of the great mountain groups, it has a distinction all its own. There is nothing forbidding about the precipitance of its cliffs and summits. Their relative lightness of tint and the warm suffusion of the sun-pervaded atmosphere that so frequently envelops them, makes their elevated parts seem almost to float in the sky. The visible traces of the horizontal bedding of the rocks that compose them render the effect of even their slenderest pinnacles less aspiring than that of the flaked and tilted slaty-crystalline spires of older and more rugged formations. Some of the sentiment of Italy hangs about the Dolomites. The airs that are drifted over them seem steeped in Italian colour, even as their names re-echo the music of the Italian tongue. The valleys between them soon dip into the level of chestnut and vine ere yet they forsake the mountains. The chalets are pregnant with suggestions of Italy, and the inhabitants possess more of Italian grace than of Swiss ruggedness. It is, however, colour, and especially atmospheric colour, that the mention of the Dolomites first calls to the mind of the votaries of those hills and valleys. Who that has beheld dawn or sunset on Cristallo or Rosengarten can forget the glorious display of rosy lights and purple shadows? The mountain forms are sometimes fine, oftener picturesque (as Titian knew). They have the rare merit of seeming to group into the happiest of combinations and contrasts as though by exceptional good luck; but the luck is of such frequent recurrence that instead of being an exception it must be counted the rule. In the presence of Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn it is natural to adore. The Dolomites men love.

Such, then, are the six main groups of Alps that the ordinary run of tourists know. They include the most majestic scenery, but are far from including all the finest. There yet remain a bewildering multitude of minor groups and areas, each rich in its own charm. Such are the Maritime Alps, the Cottians around Monte Viso, the Graians led by Grand Paradis and Grivola, the limestone Alps of Savoy, the green hills of north Switzerland and Bavaria, the Lepontine Alps, the hills of the Italian Lakes, the Toedi, the Rhaetikon, the Adamello, Ortler, Oetzthal, Stubaithal, and Zillerthal snowy masses, the Hohe Tauern, the Carnic and Julian Alps, and various other mountain groups of Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola. How many of us know a tithe of all these? It is impossible here to do more than refer briefly to a few of them.

Amongst the fairest of them all, the Maritimes should assuredly be reckoned, little visited though they be except by Italians. Their eastern and northern valleys, which alone are known to me, must be counted lovely, even judged by the high standard of loveliness that the Italian Alpine valleys set. Any one of them, transported to the midst of a Swiss group of mountains, would be the pearl of the district. What more enchanting resort can be imagined than the Baths of Valdieri, planted amidst umbrageous copses and beside laughing waters? Here all the elements of picturesque landscape group themselves together in the most perfect natural harmony. Nowhere in the opening season are the flowers more rich, the hillsides more verdant, the foliage of the trees more varied. Nowhere do woods climb slopes in more graceful procession. Nowhere are the rocks and lofty snow-peaks set in more fascinating frames of unexpected foreground. It is a valley of endless surprises and delights. Moreover, its waters are clear and glancing. They burst from the hillsides, tumble in crystalline brilliance over clifflets, dance through the meadows, and race-along beneath the shadow of beeches and chestnuts. No ogres, we may be sure, lurk in the fastnesses of these hills, but only the most delicate fairies, glittering with dew. And then the views from the peaks--how memorable they are, how unlike those of the Central Alps! For from these summits you behold always the sea, far stretching, and ever apparently calm. It looks indeed like any other sea, but you know that it is the Mediterranean with all Africa beyond it, away there in the sunny south. On the other side, far, far off to the north, is the great Alpine wall, and at your feet the sea-like Lombard plain. Those sweeps of flatness on either hand, how they tell in the midst of a mountain view! They bring into it a sense of repose. There Nature has finished her work of pulling down, and man can rest upon the fertile soil in peace. Sweet indeed is Valdieri, but it is no sweeter than its neighbouring glens. He that loves mountains in less savage mood than the great giants are wont to bear, let him fly to the Maritimes and he will not be disappointed.

Proceeding northward, the Cottians and the Tarentaise and Graians present loftier peaks and valleys beautiful, though lacking the richness and luxuriance of the Maritimes. In fact these groups stand between the Pennines and the Maritimes alike in position and in character. From the Pennines the fertile valleys are so far removed as scarcely to enter into the normal scenery of the region. In the Maritimes the chestnut woods are at the very foot of the peaks. They are further away in the Cottians, but not absolutely removed from the Alpine area. You may sleep near a vineyard one night and yet be on the snows next day. The great glory of the Cottians is the fine pyramid of Monte Viso, which so many climbers in the Swiss Alps know from afar off. It stands splendidly alone and commands one of the most superb panoramas in the Alps, wide ranging as Mont Blanc's, but seen as from the top of a tower instead of a slowly curving dome with a large white foreground that hides the depth beneath. From the Viso the sight plunges down and then flies away and yet away over the Lombard plain to peaks so remote as practically to defy identification by unaided skill of recognition.

We cannot linger in the west, for our space is limited and more than half of it is spent. Flying eastward, then, we come next to the Italian valleys of the Monte Rosa group, to which indeed they belong, though I purposely omitted reference to them when writing of that, for in style of scenery they are widely different and frequented by travellers of another sort. Here are mountain centres indeed--Breuil, Gressoney, Alagna, and so forth--whence great climbs may be made. It is not in these centres, however, that the beauty of the valleys culminates, but further down. There are in fact three zones in each valley: the upper, which is purely Alpine though lacking the grandeur of the northern slope; the middle, where on either hand are found peaks that just reach the snow level and rise from luxuriantly afforested bases: and the lower, which in summer time is too hot and fly-infested to be an agreeable resort. The middle zone is the region of fine scenery, of beautiful low passes, and of superb points of view, whence the whole Pennine range to the north is gloriously beheld.

At the lower limit of this zone stands Varallo, in the Sesia valley, a most beautiful resort for one jaded with the austere scenery of the snow and ice world. Here art and nature together claim the traveller's attention. The remarkable lifelike sculptures of the Sacro Monte and the frescoes of Gaudenzio Ferrari well deserve their wide repute, whilst the walk over the Col della Colma to the lake of Orta is one of the most charming known to me the wide world over. Once I beheld from the crest of the pass a cloudless sunrise on Monte Rosa, when the rosy glow of the snows was not more beautiful than the rich and rare violets and purples of the lower foreground hills.

By this pass we may well enter the Italian Lake districts, whose fame is known to all. He would be a niggard indeed who should refuse to reckon as Alpine this gem of scenery. Many of us regard, and rightly, a drop down into the land of the lakes as a necessary part of a full Alpine holiday, the contrast between their luxuriance and high Alpine asceticism serving best to display the charms of each. It is indeed the distant prospects of the snowy range that give a finishing touch of utter perfection to the scenery of the lakes, the finest view-point of all for comprehension and perfect composition being, perhaps, the terrace of Santa Catarina del Sasso. The climber, however, will not really learn to know the lakes if he remains, as most do, idly on their shores. Here, if anywhere, he should ascend. Down below, save for the water, the scenery may be matched all round the Italian plain and in many a valley, but up aloft on Monte Mottarone, Monte Nudo, Monte Generoso, and hills of that size, you are in the presence of panoramas nowhere else to be matched. The Rigi, the Niesen, and their fellows offer corresponding but not equal prospects north of the main range; for though lakes and snows and wide stretches of landscape are visible from them, they lack vision of the Lombard plain and the magic opalescence of the Italian atmosphere. The mountaineer who has no experience, or if experienced, no joy in the grass-crowned foot-hills that flank the great ranges is no true mountain-lover. For such persons this book is not written. They have their own kinds of pleasure and reward, pleasures which are not low and rewards well worth the winning, but they are not those that I have sought after or can rightly estimate.

Some of the fair qualities of Italian lake scenery mingle with the bolder forms of the mountains of Ticino, and something of the softness of Maggiore's air tempers the fresh breezes falling from Ticino snows. Here lies the peerless Val Maggia, whose orchard-bearing floor sweeps up between mile after mile of noble cliffs. Here every village church and almost every cottage seems to have been designed and planted for picturesque effect. It is a valley of many gardens, trimly kept, of much emigrant-won prosperity, a home of the vine and the fig-tree, also of trout-streams and other bright-glancing waters. Comfortably habitable and home-suggesting is it; a place to fall in love with, which every visitor hopes to see again, and every native promises himself that he will return to for the evening of his days. Such as it is, such also are its neighbours. Its upper reaches are more splendid than I can suggest. There is a grace in their many waterfalls, a majesty in their great steps and verdant levels, a relative wealth in their vegetation, and a charm about their villages, that must be seen to be understood. Even the Maritimes can boast no more beautiful valley scenery.

The Bergamasque Alps are, I believe, not dissimilar in character, but I know only the mere outskirts of them. What I have seen does not equal Ticino. These carry us by a natural transition to the Adamello group, which yields a remarkable long traverse over high-planted snows commanding a stupendous depth and comprehensiveness of outlook, which culminates in the extraordinary panorama visible from the highest point.

We are thus brought back again to the dominantly snowy groups, whereof a number remain yet uncharacterised. First among these secondary masses the Ortler and its fellows call for mention--a group far better known by our German and Italian colleagues than by ourselves. The chief peaks, though built on a smaller scale, have much of the apparent bulk and grandeur of the greater masses of the Central Alps. Their ice-walls and their glacier scenery in general are of the grand type. Like the great peaks, too, they are withdrawn from southern luxury. When all is said, however, they remain second-rate, nor can I recall any special note of beauty by which this district is distinguished.

The Oetzthal, Stubaithal, and Zillerthal groups, which follow one another to the eastward, are, I think, in better case; though they have lost in charm by the rapid shrinkage of their glaciers since I first knew them almost thirty years ago. The average height of the peaks is small when the large area of glacier they support is considered. Formerly the glaciers were much larger. Several that I knew have utterly vanished, and the largest are greatly reduced. The snow-fields, however, still retain their wide expanse. In consequence of the smallness of the peaks, a greater number of them exist in a given area than elsewhere in the snowy Alpine regions. This makes the foregrounds in the summit views more complex. As the scale does not obtrude itself, the eye magnifies it, and the result is an imposing effect. A similar effect of complexity struck me in Spitsbergen, where the peaks are very much smaller still, and group themselves so closely together that they seem to form a spiny tangle at once puzzling to the topographer and pleasing to the lover of mountain varieties. Owing to the smallness of scale of the Stubai peaks, for instance, you can climb two or three of them in a single day from a high-planted hut, and thus behold in the afternoon a peak you climbed in the morning. Such wandering about at high levels is a new and agreeable experience to mountaineers accustomed to the long scrambles that the greater ranges afford.

The Hohe Tauern, which splits into the two groups, dominated respectively by the Gross Glockner and Gross Venediger, scarcely calls for other remark, from a scenic point of view, than what was said about the Ortler. The panoramas from the two chief peaks are unusually fine, a quality which they share with three or four of the main elevations of the three groups just referred to. The glacier scenery of the northern slope of the Venediger and the southern of the Glockner group is the finest in Tirol, whilst the Glockner itself is built on great lines, has the qualities of a true giant, and affords some climbing of a high order. If the reader, however, will consent to descend from these superior considerations to others of a more practical character, his attention may be called to the fact that, in this many-hutted district, facilities are afforded to a climber which he will not often find equalled elsewhere except in one or two minor Tirolese groups. So numerous and large are the huts, and so well provided with all the necessaries for life and reasonable comfort, that it is almost superfluous to carry food, or for a party of moderately experienced climbers to require the services of a guide. There are huts where you can breakfast, lunch, dine, and sleep at convenient intervals. If this tends to destroy the charm of solitude, which is one of the greatest that the regions of snow usually afford, it enables even the average climber to wander more freely than he can elsewhere, and less burdened with baggage or the often unsympathetic companionship of a guide. The gain more than compensates most men for the loss, and makes this district specially deserving of the guideless amateur's attention.

Of regions further east and south I cannot write, knowing only from personal acquaintance the mountains near the Semmering pass, and the hills between them and Vienna. Here the forest scenery is the great charm. The forest-clad hills and deep hidden lakes of the Salzkammergut, North Tirol, and the Bavarian uplands must at least be mentioned. They belong to what we English may describe as the Scotland of the Alps. No lover of mountains will deny the potent charm of forests, especially in hilly country richly watered. Their sombre gloom matches many a human mood.

Not all scenery is alike grateful to every one, or to any one at all times. It behoves a traveller to know his own mood and to choose a resort that matches it. If he wants solitude, he should not select Zermatt or Chamonix. If he abounds in energy, he should not look to lakes and mild climates for its satisfaction. If he loves variety, he should not plant himself in the midst of a mainly snow-clad region. One district will suit him best in one year, another in another. That will not delight him equally in maturity which enlists the strongest enthusiasm of his youth. But the variety that is in the Alps at large is infinite. There will always be discoverable the right thing for each who cares to search it out.

The habit of constantly returning to the same spot may almost be regarded as a vice to be avoided.

"To give space for wandering is it That the world was made so wide."

Assuredly the wanderer has most rewards. The more he knows of other regions, the more is the significance increased of the view which he at any moment beholds, and so much the more capable does his eye become of recognising all sorts and varieties of beauty. But this is only true of one who travels with observant eyes and receptive understanding. It is possible to travel far and wide without ever really seeing anything. Such travel is the merest waste of energy. To travel should be to learn; but travelling is only learning when the traveller makes learning his purpose.

Discrimination is the quality that distinguishes intelligence from brutal greed. It differentiates the _gourmet_ from the _gourmand_. It divides the mountain-lover from the common peak peak-hunter. It is the quality that continues growing longest, whose exercise is never wearisome, whose reward is always increasing. To be able to discriminate between the qualities of different Alpine regions and to appreciate all their varied merits is to know the Alps. All that it has been possible to do in the present chapter is to indicate in briefest terms some of the characteristic charms of the principal regions, known incompletely to the present writer, and by him but feebly grasped. He ventures to hope that even this sketch, slight and falteringly drawn as it is, may yet serve to suggest to some readers a whole world of delights, which, if they choose, they may immediately enter into and possess.

By all means visit the famous centres. A true instinct has marked them out and made them widely known as specially calculated to awaken the imagination of the town-dwelling modern world. But do not regard them as the whole Alps; do not start with the assurance that there alone is Alpine beauty to be found in highest perfection. For you, perhaps, the highest Alpine beauty resides in less well advertised localities. Let each seek out for himself that which he can most keenly enjoy. It will be his possession and not another's. Let him take it to his soul. But let him also remember that there are other capacities, which he does not possess or has not yet developed, and that for them also the mountains great and small possess powers of satisfaction as rich and manifold as any he has himself experienced.