Livy, or rather Holland, begins with Hannibal’s sentiments on “seeing near at hand the height of those hills ... the horses singed with cold ... the people with long shagd haire.” Hannibal and his army were much depressed, but, none the less, they advanced under a fierce guerilla attack from the natives, who “slipt away at night, every one to his owne harbour.” Then follows a fine description of the difficulties of the pass. The poor elephants “were ever readie and anone to run upon their noses”--a phrase which evokes a tremendous picture--“and the snow being once with the gate of so many people and beasts upon it fretted and thawed, they were fain to go upon the bare yce underneeth and in the slabberie snow-broth as it relented and melted about their heeles.” A great rock hindered the descent; Hannibal set it on fire and “powred thereon strong vinegar for to calcine and dissolve it,” a device unknown to modern mountaineers. The passage ends with a delightful picture of the army’s relief on reaching “the dales and lower grounds which have some little banks lying to the sunne, and rivers withall neere unto the woods, yea and places more meet and beseeming for men to inhabit.” Experts are divided as to what pass was actually crossed by Hannibal. Even the Col de Géant has been suggested by a romantic critic; it is certainly stimulating to picture Hannibal’s elephants in the Géant ice-fall. Probably the Little St. Bernard, or the Mont Genèvre, is the most plausible solution. So much for the great traverse. Some twenty-five glacier passes had been actually crossed before the close of the sixteenth century, a fact which bears out our contention that in the Middle Ages a good deal more was known about the craft of mountaineering than is generally supposed. There is, however, this distinctive difference between passes and peaks. A man may cross a pass because it is the most convenient route from one valley to another. He may cross it though he is thoroughly unhappy until he reaches his destination, and it would be just as plausible to argue from his journey a love of mountains as to deduce a passion for the sea in every sea-sick traveller across the Channel. But a man will not climb a mountain unless he derives some interest from the actual ascent. Passes may be crossed in the way of business. Mountains will only be climbed for the joy of the climb.