But with increase of experience on the mountains themselves come knowledge and a whole group of new associations. A man does not climb a mountain without bringing some of it away with him and leaving something of himself upon it. Returned to the level and looking back, he does not see his peak as before. Every feature of the road he traversed is remembered, and he instinctively tries to fit the features to the view. That velvet slope above the trees is the stony tract up which he toiled before dawn and where he stumbled in the fitful lantern-light. That grey band beside the glacier is the moraine, whose big rocks were unstable beneath his tread. That glacier—how slippery it was before the sun smote it! There are the crevasses that made his track so devious; and there began the snowfield so hard and pleasant under foot in the early hours, so toilsome to wade through as the day advanced. In the upper part of the mountain all the little features, that seemed unimportant from below, take on a new meaning. He finds it hard to identify different points. Can that tiny thread of snow be the broad gully up which so many steps had to be cut? He looks at it through a telescope, and the actual traces of his staircase become visible. The mountain judged by the scale of remembered toil grows wonderfully in height. The eye thus trained begins to realise and even to exaggerate the vast scale on which peaks are built. But along with this gain in the truthful sense of scale comes the loss of mystery. The peak which was in heaven is brought down to earth. It was a mere thing of beauty to be adored and wondered at; it has become something to be climbed. Its details have grown intelligible and interesting. The mind regards it from a new aspect, begins to analyse its forms and features, and to consider them mainly in their relation to man as a climber. As knowledge grows this attitude of mind develops. Each fresh peak ascended teaches something. The nature of the climbing on peaks not yet ascended can to some extent be estimated from below. The inquiry naturally arises, How shall that peak be climbed? Which is the way to attack it? The eye traces possible routes and foresees probable difficulties. It rejects or modifies proposed ways. It observes all kinds of structural details. It notes the path of avalanches and the signs of falling stones. It concentrates its attention upon ice-falls and endeavours to thread the maze of their séracs. Thus the intelligence replaces the æsthetic sense and the enjoyment of beauty becomes or is liable to become dimmed.
The longer a climber gratifies his instincts and pursues his sport, the larger becomes his store of reminiscences and the greater his experience. If he confines his attention to a single range of mountains such as the Alps, he is almost always in sight of mountains he has climbed and glaciers he has traversed. Each view shows him some route he has once pursued, some glacier basin he has explored, some pass he has crossed. The labyrinth of valleys and the crests of successive ridges do not puzzle him. He knows how they are grouped and whither they lead. Beyond those mountains is the Zermatt valley; that peak looks down on Zinal; that col leads to Saas. Thus there grows in him the sense of the general shape and arrangement of the country. It is no longer a tangled chaos of heights and depths, but an ordered anatomy, formed by the action of definite and continuous forces. So far as his knowledge extends this orderliness is realised. He has developed a geographical sense. That in its turn poses problems for solution. He notes some corner of his map where a deep-lying valley is intricately fitted in amongst ridges which he has seen from without. He becomes desirous to visit it, so that he may complete the map in his own understanding.
When he goes to a new district he cannot but be eager to obtain a geographical grasp of its form and arrangement. The instinct that desires to see round corners and over walls has now new food to grow on. In a fresh district the geographical problem is always fascinating, but in one that has been explored by no mountaineer before, its fascination is overwhelming, especially if the explorer be a surveyor and cartographer, as I can attest. To see the sketch-map of a previously unsurveyed country grow upon the paper is an intense satisfaction. The aspect of every peak gives rise to a twofold problem. Can it be climbed, and if so by what route? How should it be depicted on the map? These questions are ever present. The solution of them is the thought of every hour, the first point of interest in every view. As it is with the explorer, so to a less extent is it liable to be with every climber; for all climbers are to some extent explorers, even though they are but exploring previously described and mapped territory. It is new to them, at any rate, and that is the important fact. Climbers, when they begin to exhaust a district, move to another in hunger after the unknown.
LOOKING UP VALLEY TOWARDS ZERMATT FROM NEAR RANDA
Theodulhorn and Furggengrat in distance.
Hence, as the seasons go by, it happens that the æsthetic interest, which was at first the climber's main delight, begins to fade. If he be a man of scientific interests it is liable to an even quicker evanescence than if he be not, for problems of geological structure, or of botanical distribution, or of glaciology and the like, are a keen source of intellectual enjoyment. At length, perhaps, the day comes when the loss is felt. There is a gorgeous range of snow mountains with every effect of cloud and sunshine that the eye can desire, displayed about and upon them, yet the climber finds with dismay that his heart is cold. The old glory has vanished from the scene and the old thrill is an unfelt emotion. What is the matter? Have his eyes grown dim? Has he lost the faculty of delight? Is he growing old? Whatever the cause, the effect is painful in the extreme. It is one that many of us have felt, especially towards the close of a long and successful climbing season, or extensive journey of exploration. There is but one remedy—to quit the mountains for a while and attend to the common business of life. When winter months have gone by and summer is again at hand, the old enthusiasm is liable to return. Sooner or later the true mountain-lover will begin to starve for sight of the snows.
When age comes upon him and his limbs grow stiff and his heart enfeebles, the desire to climb may slacken, but the love of mountains will not diminish. Rather will it take on again something of its first freshness. Then it was purely objective; now it becomes objective once more. The desire to obtain and to possess passes away. We know what it is like to be aloft. We foresee the toil with no less, perhaps with even greater clearness of prevision than we foresee the triumph and the delight. We have learnt the secret of the hills and entered into the treasures of the snow. Now we can afford to rest below and gaze aloft. If the mystery of our first views can never return, the glow of multitudinous memories replaces it not unworthily. The peaks have become inaccessible once more. They again belong to another world, the world of the past. The ghosts of our dead friends people them, and the ghosts of our dead selves. When the evening glow floods them at close of day it mingles with the mellow glories of the years that are gone. The old passionate hopes and strivings, the old disappointments and regrets, the old rivalries, and the old triumphs, vaguely mingling in a faint regret, beget in the retired mountaineer an attitude of peace and aloofness. He feels again the incommunicable and indescribable delight that thrilled him at the first; but now, though it is less passionate, less stimulating, less overwhelming than of yore, it is mellower and not a whit less beautiful and true.
EIGER, MÖNCH, AND JUNGFRAU, FROM SCHERZLIGEN, NEAR THUN