The Alps

The last chapter has brought the story of mountaineering up to modern times, but, before we close, there is another side of Alpine exploration on which we must touch. For Alpine...

The history of mountaineering contains nothing more dramatic than the epic of the Matterhorn. There is no mountain which appeals so readily to the imagination. Its unique form h...

Mountaineering, as a sport, is so often treated as an invention of Englishmen, that the real facts of its origin are unconsciously disguised. A commonplace error of the textbook...

Alpine History is not easy to divide into arbitrary periods; and yet the conquest of the Matterhorn does in a certain sense define a period. It closes what has been called “the...

The history of Mont Blanc has been made the subject of an excellent monograph, and the reader who wishes to supplement the brief sketch which is all that we can attempt should b...

Within the compass of this book, we cannot narrate the history of Alpine passes, though the subject is intensely interesting, but we must not omit all mention of the great class...

The story of Monte Rosa has forced us to anticipate the chronological order of events. We must now turn back, and follow the fortunes of the men whose names are linked with the...

The climbs, so far chronicled, have been modest achievements and do not include a genuine snow-peak, for the Roche Melon has permanent snow on one side only. We have seen that m...

Rousseau is usually credited with the discovery that mountains are not intrinsically hideous. Long before his day, isolated men had loved the mountains, but these men were eccen...

The conquest of Mont Blanc was the most important mountaineering achievement of the period; but good work was also being done in other parts of the Alps. Monte Rosa, as we soon...

predecessors. Bourrit, De Saussure, Beck, Placidus à Spescha, and the other pioneers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, deserve the greatest credit. But their...