Thirty years before this defiant demonstration, the mountain had been ascended by the most remarkable of the early mountaineers. Conrad Gesner was a professor at the ancient University of Zürich. Though not the first to make climbing a regular practice, he was the pioneer of mountain literature. He never encountered serious difficulties. His mountaineering was confined to those lower heights which provide the modern with a training walk. But he had the authentic outlook of the mountaineer. His love for mountains was more genuine than that of many a modern wielder of the ice-axe and rope. A letter has been preserved, in which he records his resolution “to climb mountains, or at all events to climb one mountain every year.” We have no detailed record of his climbs, but luckily his account of an ascent of Pilatus still survives, a most sincere tribute to the simple pleasures of the heights. It is a relief to turn to it after wading through more recent Alpine literature. Gesner’s writing is subjective. It records the impress of simple emotions on an unsophisticated mind. He finds a naïve joy in all the elemental things that make up a mountain walk, the cool breezes plying on heated limbs, the sun’s genial warmth, the contrasts of outline, colour, and height, the unending variety, so that “in one day you wander through the four seasons of the year, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.” He explains that every sense is delighted, the sense of hearing is gratified by the witty conversation of friends, “by the songs of the birds, and even by the stillness of the waste.” He adds, in a very modern note, that the mountaineer is freed from the noisy tumult of the city, and that in the “profound abiding silence one catches echoes of the harmony of celestial spheres.” There is more in the same key. He anticipates the most enduring reward of the mountaineer, and his words might serve as the motto for a mountain book of to-day: “Jucundum erit postea meminisse laborum atque periculorum, juvabit hæc animo revolvere et narrare amicis.” Toil and danger are sweet to recall, every mountaineer loves “to revolve these in his mind and to tell them to his friends.” Moreover, contrast is the essence of our enjoyment and “the very delight of rest is intensified when it follows hard labour.” And then Gesner turns with a burst of scorn to his imaginary opponent. “But, say you, we lack feather beds and mattresses and pillows. Oh, frail and effeminate man! Hay shall take the place of these luxuries. It is soft, it is fragrant. It is blended from healthy grass and flower, and as you sleep respiration will be sweeter and healthier than ever. Your pillow shall be of hay. Your mattress shall be of hay. A blanket of hay shall be thrown across your body.” That is the kind of thing an enthusiastic mountaineer might have written about the club-huts in the old days before the hay gave place to mattresses. Nor does Gesner spoil his