A short time ago I published a book of ‘Fragments,’ which might have
been called ‘Hours of Exercise in the Attic and the Laboratory’; while
this one bears the title of ‘Hours of Exercise in the Alps.’ The two
volumes supplement each other, and, taken together, illustrate the mode
in which a lover of natural knowledge and of natural scenery chooses to
spend his life.
Much as I enjoy the work, I do not think that I could have filled my
days and hours in the Alps with clambering alone. The climbing in
many cases was the peg on which a thousand other ‘exercises’ were
hung. The present volume, however, is for the most part a record of
bodily action, written partly to preserve to myself the memory of
strong and joyous hours, and partly for the pleasure of those who find
exhilaration in descriptions associated with mountain life.
The papers, written during the last ten years, are printed in the order
of the incidents to which they relate; and, to render the history more
complete, I have, with the permission of their authors, introduced
nearly the whole of two articles by Mr. Vaughan Hawkins and Mr. Philip
Gossett. The former describes the first assault ever made upon the
Matterhorn, the latter an expedition which ended in the death of a
renowned and beloved guide.
The ‘Glaciers of the Alps’ being out of print, I can no longer refer to
it. Towards the end of the volume, therefore, I have thrown together
a few ‘Notes and Comments’ which may be useful to those who desire to
possess some knowledge of the phenomena of the ice-world, and of the
properties of ice itself. To these are added one or two minor articles,
which relate more or less to our British hills and lakes: the volume is
closed by an account of a recent voyage to Oran.
I refrain from giving advice, further than to say that the perils of
wandering in the High Alps are terribly real, and are only to be met by
knowledge, caution, skill, and strength. ‘For rashness, ignorance, or
carelessness the mountains leave no margin; and to rashness, ignorance,
or carelessness three-fourths of the catastrophes which shock us are
to be traced.’ Those who wish to know something of the precautions to
be taken upon the peaks and glaciers cannot do better than consult the
excellent little volume lately published by Leslie Stephen, where,
under the head of ‘Dangers of Mountaineering,’ this question is
discussed.
I would willingly have published this volume without illustrations,
and should the reader like those here introduced--two of which were
published ten years ago, and the remainder recently executed under
the able superintendence of Mr. Whymper--he will have to ascribe his
gratification to the initiative of Mr. William Longman, not to me.
I have sometimes tried to trace the genesis of the interest which
I take in fine scenery. It cannot be wholly due to my own early
associations; for as a boy I loved nature, and hence, to account for
that love, I must fall back upon something earlier than my own birth.
The forgotten associations of a far-gone ancestry are probably the
most potent elements in the feeling. With characteristic penetration,
Mr. Herbert Spencer has written of the growth of our appreciation of
natural scenery with growing years. But to the associations of the
individual himself he adds ‘certain deeper, but now vague, combinations
of states, that were organised in the race during barbarous times,
when its pleasurable activities were among the mountains, woods, and
waters. Out of these excitations,’ he adds, ‘some of them actual, but
most of them nascent, is composed the emotion which a fine landscape
produces in us.’ I think this an exceedingly likely proximate
hypothesis, and hence infer that those ‘vague and deep combinations
organised in barbarous times,’ not to go further back, have come down
with considerable force to me. Adding to these inherited feelings the
pleasurable present exercise of Mr. Bain’s ‘muscular sense,’ I obtain a
somewhat intelligible, though, doubtless, still secondary theory of my
delight in the mountains.
The name of a friend whom I taught in his boyhood to handle a
theodolite and lay a chain, and who afterwards turned his knowledge to
account on the glaciers of the Alps, occurs frequently in the following
pages. Of the firmness of a friendship, uninterrupted for an hour, and
only strengthened by the weathering of six-and-twenty years, he needs
no assurance. Still, for the pleasure it gives myself, I connect this
volume with the name of THOMAS ARCHER HIRST.