Josias Simler was a mountaineer of a very different type. To him belongs the credit of compiling the first treatise on the art of Alpine travel. Though he introduces no personal reminiscences, his work is so free from current superstition that he must have been something of a climber; but, though a climber, he did not share Gesner’s enthusiasm for the hills. For, though he seems to have crossed glacier passes, whereas Gesner confined himself to the lower mountains, yet the note of enthusiasm is lacking. His horror of narrow paths, bordering on precipices, is typical of the age; and if he ventured across a pass he must have done so in the way of business. There is, as we have already pointed out, a marked difference between passes and mountains. A merchant with a holy horror of mountains may be forced to cross a pass in the way of business, but a man will only climb a mountain for the fun of the thing. It is clear that Simler could only see in mountains a sense of inconvenient barriers to commerce, but as a practical man he set out to codify the existing knowledge. Gesner’s mountain work is subjective; it is the literature of emotion; he is less concerned with the mountain in itself, than with the mountain as it strikes the individual observer. Simler, on the other hand, is the forerunner of the objective school. He must delight those who postulate that all Alpine literature should be the record of positive facts. The personal note is utterly lacking. Like Gesner, he was a professor at Zürich. Unlike Gesner, he was an embodiment of the academic tradition that is more concerned with fact than with emotion. None the less, his work was a very valuable contribution, as it summarised existing knowledge on the art of mountain travel. His information is singularly free from error. He seems to have understood the use of the rope, alpenstocks, crampons, dark spectacles, and the use of paper as a protection against cold. It is strange that crampons, which were used in Simler’s days, were only reintroduced into general practice within the last decades, whilst the uncanny warmth of paper is still unknown to many mountaineers. His description of glacier perils, due to concealed crevasses, is accurate, and his analysis of avalanches contains much that is true. We are left with the conviction that snow- and ice-craft is an old science, though originally applied by merchants rather than pure explorers. We quoted Simler, in the first chapter, in support of our contention that foreigners came in great numbers to see and rejoice in the beauty of the Alps. But, though Simler proves that passes were often crossed in the way of business, and that mountains were often visited in search of beauty, he himself was no mountain lover.