Mountaineering, as a sport, is so often treated as an invention of Englishmen, that the real facts of its origin are unconsciously disguised. A commonplace error of the textbooks is to date sporting mountaineering from Mr. Justice Wills’s famous ascent of the Wetterhorn in 1854. The Wetterhorn has three peaks, and Mr. Justice Wills made the ascent of the summit which is usually climbed from Grindelwald. This peak, the Hasle Jungfrau, is the most difficult of the group but it is not the highest. In those early days, first ascents were not recorded with the punctuality and thoroughness that prevails to-day; and a large circle of mountaineers gave Mr. Justice Wills the credit of making the first ascent of the Hasle Jungfrau, or at least the first ascent from Grindelwald. Curiously enough, the climb, which is supposed to herald sporting mountaineering, was only the second ascent of the Grindelwald route to the summit of a peak which had already been climbed four times. The facts are as follows: Desor’s guides climbed the Hasle Jungfrau in 1844, and Desor himself followed a few days after. Three months before Wills’s ascent, the peak was twice climbed by an early English pioneer, Mr. Blackwell. Blackwell’s first ascent was by the Rosenlaui route, which Desor had followed, and his second, by the Grindelwald route, chosen by Mr. Wills. On the last occasion, he was beaten by a storm within about ten feet of the top, ten feet which he had climbed on the previous occasion. He planted a flag just under the final cornice; and we must give him the credit of the pioneer ascent from Grindelwald. Mr. Wills never heard of these four ascents, and believed that the peak was still virgin when he ascended it.