Switzerland

Alps are always associated with Switzerland in the popular mind; and with good reason, for the country is particularly and almost wholly Alpine in its character, and its natio

ks of the South Seas, some of which were born amid thunders and lightnings only yesterday, considering Time in geological periods. The form of a mountain range and its height give usually some surface indications of its age. New mountains, like those of the S

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estroying wind set to work to cut away its peak and pull it down to the level of the plain again. If the mountain is of more slow creation, the result of a gradual up-wrinkling of a crease of the Earth as she readjusts her surface to the cooling of her bulk, the mountain may go on growing whilst also it

eaks, and hills of unmelting ice. To-day they have been ground down to below the line of perpetual snow, and along the gentle grades of the chief peak it is po

"L'Aletsch," had retreated 10 feet, following on nearly 60 feet in 1911, and rather more than that in 1910. The Rhine Glacier had gone back 34 feet, in addition to the 70 feet lost in the previous two years. An exception to the general rule appeared at first to be furnished by the two glaciers of Grindelwald, which had increased since last year; but the advance did not compensate for the loss

t asserts that the glaciers in Argentina are also retreating, and surmises, from data perhaps not so well established, that there has been a general retreat of glaciers during the last half of the nineteenth century throughout Spitzbergen, Iceland, Central Asia, and Alaska. He suggests that the cause is a present tendency towards equalisation of the earth's temperature. Others mor

t the glaciers of different mountains have the same variations of character as the

tely equipped expedition is required. Yet they are large enough to be imposing, and penetrate deep enough into the heart of the hills to isolate their votaries completely from the world of human habitation. It is to this medium quality that the Alps owe much of their charm. This, too, it is that makes them an almost perfect mountain playground. Were they but a little smaller, how much they would lose that is most precious! Were they larger, how many persons that now can

ive mountains have a charm from their style as well as from their record of exact observations. Born in 1740, he was appointed at the age of twenty-one Professor of Philosophy at

ith their eyes fixed upon the earth, picking up a specimen here and a specimen there, without any eye to a generalization. They remind me of an antiquary scratching the ground

ice of danger-follows a sport so modern that there are men now living who were born before the passion for Alpine climbing came to birth. Certainly the Alps were traversed of old. But strictly not for pleasure. The most accessible passes, not the most difficult peaks, were sought out; and the burdens and terrors of the passage, not the joys of it, were uppermost in

y tell them, that they come not into this place of torment. Place of torment indeed, where the marble pavement of the stony ground is ice, and you cannot set your foot safely; where, strange to say, although it is so slippery that you cannot stand, the death (into which there is every facility to fall) i

iscover, was that very typical Englishman, Mr. Albert Smith, who in 1851 climbed Mount Blanc, and devoted six years of profitable life afterwards to describing how he did it, to audiences at the Egyptian Hall, London. A nation which had already invented Arctic exploration was quick to seize upon Alpine climbing as an outlet for superfluous energy and love of danger.

the mountain which he "invented," according to the sober pages of the Dictionary of National Biography. Sir Leslie Stephen, of whom it was said "He walked from Alp to Alp like a pair of one-inch comp

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year quite a number of travellers cross to Canada to encounter the dangers of the Rockies and the Selkirks there. To far-off New Zealand the Alpinists go; and I have encountered in Sydney an enthusiastic English lady who had climbed peaks in all corners of the earth and had come to Austr

he pride of achievement. Some of the peaks which once were difficult have now been made easy: funicular railways run to spots which were once inaccessible except to keen mountaineers. These spots the mountain-climber shuns. It is not the wis

the sea; the land, and the air above the land. And perhaps there comes to the climber a keener, finer sense of the beauties of the scenery which he has come to see with so much effort and danger. So Si

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the rocks grow brown: there is blue in the crevasses, and green upon the swards-all low-toned yet distinct. Faint puffs of warm air come, we

ets turn to molten gold. The horizon flames along all its fretted eastern edge, a narrow band of lambent light, a smokeless crimson fire. The belt of colour grows broader; it swamps and dyes the cloudlets crimson. Long pink streamers of soft light strike up from where the sun is presently to appear. The great moment is at hand. All eyes rove around the view. At last some near high peak salutes

penalty before the dawn is night in a hut which has but elementary ventilation to counteract the fumes of lamps, stoves, and steaming clothes? Going to t