Reviews

Peaks And Pleasant Pastures.
By Claud Schuster.

(Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1911. pp. 227. 7s. 6d. net.)

All mountain lovers will be grateful to Mr. Schuster for collecting – and in such dignified form – his recent articles in The Times and elsewhere. It has always been the fashion to say of the Alps that they are “exhausted,” forgetting that the Alps are part of Nature and that she is inexhaustible. New climbs are being made” every season, and, what is better, old climbs are being looked at with new eyes, or, as here, described by new pens, for our author makes no pretence to be a pioneer. More than half the book is taken up with descriptions of his Alpine wanderings in the years 1902 and 1908 to 1911, beginning with that enchanted land “at the back of the Bernina, ” passing on to the stones of Dauphiné and the snows of, Mont Blanc, dwelling lovingly on the humbler valleys of the Tarentaise and concluding – we had almost said making the most of – the clubbiste haunted Oberland, an itinerary sufficient in itself to shew him to be one of those who are not ashamed to be dubbed “eccentrics.” This is not to say that he avoids the bigger peaks; Mont Blanc is climbed by the rocks and by the Midi route, the latter in bad weather; on Mont Pourri, less lucky than we who followed him two days later, he only succeeded at a second attempt ; the Jungfrau and the Schreckhorn both “go” in good weather; so do the Bietschorn – not without risks from stones – the Ecrins and the Meije; all of them with guides, for Mr. Schuster makes no claim to be a leader, he is nothing if not modest, but none the less his story shews him to be a very competent second on the rope.

Interesting as he is when roped he becomes even more so in the unroped security of the valley, at leisure to observe and philosophize on the people of the country, their methods of life and the idiosyncrasies of his guides. Take for example his description of a night in the Granges Martin, where it is usual to sleep out for the Pourri:-

“The chalets stand on a hillock, say 2,000 ft. above the valley floor, in a sea of farm-yard filth; behind stretches a green meadow, and all around wanders every conceivable kind of domestic animal. The interior differs only from the common type by the fact that most of the population sleep in an inner room – whose ceiling makes a hay-loft – containing one ordinary bed (for grandmamma and grandpapa) and one enormous cupboard which, when opened, discloses a huge recess where papa and mamma, Elmira, Honoria and the baby take their rest. A superfluous woman sleeps in the outer room, and somewhere about the premises are stowed a hind and a boy. We pulled enough hay from the loft to keep off the damp from the floor of beaten earth and spread our sleeping bags thereon. Joseph and the porter, a very dashing young man from Val d’Isére, climbed into the loft; Casimir chose the floor and all was ready for the night.”

“Before that, however, was to come the best part of the entertainment. As the great pot boiled gently the men talked in that steady flow of 1’acy trivialities which is of the soil. You should always travel with French guides in these regions. Not only do they adapt themselves far more easily than the Teuton with his ever-homing soul, but their quick minds find an interest in the novel, their ease of manner and courtesy make you friends wherever you go and their insatiable curiosity as to the life of man and the lives of beasts open for you that heavily-barred door – the peasant’s heart. On such occasions Joseph, who delights in anything young, pets the children and the calves and the little pigs, and Casimir, a traveller in grain, sucks out the history and the economy of the valley, the system of land-holding, the secrets of the cheese, the prices of the market. ‘I wondered as we drove down the valley,’ he began, ‘why you don’t grow potatoes. You seem to manage barley,’ and so the ball is set rolling. Then, after that subject was exhausted, the porter began the wonderful epos of the valley; how he and his father and other bold spirits made their, way in winter into the head of Val Savaranche, not having the fear of Victor Emmanuel III. before their eyes, and pursued his Majesty’s bucks; of how there came upon them his Majesty’s guardians of the chase and bound them with ropes, and as they lay there in the snow how he, with superhuman strength and agility, freed himself and his father and others, all but one. Then came the wild pursuit and flight across the head of Val de Rhêmes until he found himself twenty-four hours later alone in the wilderness of the head of Val Grisanche and, not daring in his loneliness and hunger to face another pass, threw himself on the mercy of the carabinieri there, and was kindly entreated, and so came home again. But he who was left bound was carried down to Aosta and was hardly freed by the influence of a mighty man there, his cousin, and by a great sum of money.”

In “The Middle Age of a Mountaineer” Mr. Schuster poses, with indifferent success, for those of us who saw at the Club Dinner two years ago, as a middle-aged climber, careless of “records” or new routes, but careful of the cuisine, moved by the memories of the long ago and open to all the majesty and the sweet influence of the hills. And in “Mountaineering” and the “Cup and the Lip” he is full of information and warning couched in a form of words all his own. Indeed, one of the book’s greatest charms is the quaint mingling of pathos and humour, of the apt quotation and le mot juste, which makes every page a quarry for the reviewer. Such sentences as these:- “It was not light enough to save our slippered toes from the loose stones and we moved with curses by the sense of touch” – “They looked to me the kind of Alpine company which meets with regrettable incidents” – “I cannot name the flowers through which we brushed but we adored where we did not understand” – “There are those who complain of chalet dirt. It is, however, a good, honest dirt” – “To be really wet through is the most luxurious of sensations. Add a session of sweet and occasionally, silent thought, a blanket for your garment, your naked toes against the fire-bars, your dripping garments playing a symphony on the top of the stove and who shall ask more of fate or lament a lost mountain?” – and many another, are sentences to store in the memory for use on occasion.

It is not too much to say that with writers like Mr. Schuster – and may we add Mr. Young – the glorious company of Whymper and Leslie Stephen and their successors is in no danger of lacking good suit.

One word in conclusion in praise of Mr. New’s maps, drawn as an eagle or an aeroplanist might see them, the ridges and glaciers in sunlight and the valleys in shadow, as conventional in form as the old monkish maps but strictly accurate in their main outlines.

Among The Hills.
A Book Of Joy In High Places.
By Reginald Farrer.

(London: Headley Bros. 1911. pp. 326. 10s. 6d. net.)

Mr. Farrer’s latest work needs no words of ours to ensure it a warm welcome from his fellow-members. Their enjoyment of his “Yorkshire Garden,” of his papers “The Population of the Alps” and “Gaping Ghyll ” in this Journal, and of his two delightful lectures, in the first of which, by the way, he gave us a foretaste of the present work, are too recent to make that necessary. But to the world of Alpinists at large, “Among the Hills” reveals a new outlook on their little world and adds, it is not too much to say, a new evangel to the Gospel of the Mountains. Of the more obvious phases of the sport we have had chroniclers galore, some inspired and inspiring, some didactic, some others merely funny and a few depressing. Even in Mr. Farrer’s own domain of Mountain Botany the annual output is considerable, but we know of none like this. Most of them are merely books of more or less scientific description, but in his he gives a charming account of what he called a “cheap little humble trip of six weeks or so round the Graian Cottian and Maritime Alps,” in which every stage, every halt – we had almost said every meal – and certainly every flower, is recorded with gay good humour and a marvellous variety of diction.

Those of us who, in this latter age, when all the nations are Alpinists, have almost persuaded ourselves that the Alps, as climbers used to know them, only begin south of the Pennines, will especially welcome his descriptions of their favourite playground. The Mont Cenis, the Waldensian Valleys and the Maritime Alps are his hunting-ground, his terrain, not, need we say, the rock summits or the wooded lowlands but the slopes and the moraines between, and his prey the mountain flowers that in early summer glorify those otherwise sufficiently uninteresting places. His method is the simple and natural one of describing how and where he finds each particular flower and then enlarging on its virtues and vices, its propensities and dislikes, with the full knowledge he has acquired in his own garden at Ingleborough. Into these we have no space to enter, but every climber ought to read them. There are numerous plates of wonderful accuracy and charm and we hardly know which to admire most, the landscapes of Mr. Soper, radiant with flower-covered meadows, or the exquisite flower studies of Mrs. Addington Symonds.

Almost every page would justify a quotation but we will content ourselves with the following as of special interest to members:-

“But the fact is that few people seem to have any adequate sense of the I beauty of rock as mere rock. Without consideration of garniture or surroundings rock itself can be one of the most beautiful things in all beautiful nature. I would as soon chip and hack at a natural rock-face as I would try to quarry building blocks from the Lemnian Athena. Yet so many people seem blind to these possibilities of pleasure and look on stone simply as a thing that gets in your way when you are making a path or perhaps may be made useful as road metal. They bash it down with hammers and leave a venerable surface gashed and scarred and mangled beyond repair of nature; or they hew steps in it of a raw and mathematical preciseness. They have neither sight nor reverence, yet gods as surely dwell in rock and cliff as in the oak or the glittering water.

“Yet all stone has not the same mystery of holiness and beauty. With my inevitable prejudice I find myself always going back longingly to the thought of this noble mountain-limestone of ours – the loveliest of formations that I know. For, if it has not the rosy blush of the Jurassic nor the rich glow and glory of Dolomite, yet its shades of colour, though gentler, are no less wonderful and in form of individual block it even surpasses either. See how it weathers and frets into the most fantastic shapes; how sometimes it keeps to stern and precipitous lines unfriendly in their splendour or softens into moutonné shelves and declivities on which velvety mosses lodge in lines and cushions; or is often channelled smooth by rain or washed into little ripples and ridges or pierced and tunnelled into hollows and holes and rounded basins where the moorland water lodges. And in colour how it varies infinitely; lilac pink in summer haze, and grey in storm; bone-white at times, and blue in winter or darkening to black or violet in rain; but always shaded and varied and graded in its tones, conveying in its successive moods the impression of its personality.

“For even if it be too mystic a thought for Jermyn Street, I can but feel that all the organic strata have more sympathy with the ways of the world than those grim primeval rocks that are congealed tire out of the p time when no life yet was. Look at these sterile straight lines of the granite from which poor Primula marginata hangs on this Bocca Lorina – how stiff and pitiless and alien. This stone has never had any part in life; life passes it by, receiving no companionship, and giving none. But for those rocks that are built up of countless myriad husks of existence, it seems as if the ghosts of their bygone component activities still linger in them, and make one with the life that unceasingly flows on; and understanding, adapting themselves to the purposes of the world instead of resisting stupidly like the granites and then gracelessly capitulating in ugly ruin. Compare the surrender of a limestone mountain with the soulless collapse of a granitic. Take two: look round at gaunt Viso, now peering over the hills; it is nothing but a wreckage of sharp slabs and splinters, a mere tumble of desolation when you draw near; and then compare this with the moulded and living loneliness of Croda Rossa or the Drei Zinnen – not a whit less splendid, though, than Viso, in the soaring upward rush of their peaks. Or, if you do not care to go so far, compare the noble lines of the Long Scar with the huddled gritstone masses under the western face of Ingleborough, exactly like a rock-garden of the Victorian era in their bald and chaotic barrenness.”

We can hardly hope for another work as good as this, but Mr. Farrer’s genius is so versatile that we hope its reception will encourage him to try.

With Ski In Norway And Lapland.
By J. H. W. Fulton, B.A.

(London: Philip Lee Warner. 1911. pp. xv. and 254 5s. od.)

This is a straightforward account in diary form of how the author with his wife and a friend fared in March and April, 1911, at Bessheim, on the eastern confines of the Jotunheim and, further north, within the Arctic circle, at Tromsö and at Kiruna in Swedish Lapland.

After watching the Annual Jumping Competition at Holmenkollen, the party went by train from Christiania to Sjoa and forward by sleigh to Bessheim, two days’ journey. Bessheim is a collection of half a dozen small wooden houses on the Upper Sjodals Lake, and at least six different mountains can be ascended from it in one day expeditions, almost all of them affording straight runs of enormous length, some of several miles. There are no trees, which the author, an experienced ski-runner, thinks a drawback, much ski-ing amongst the woods of the Feldberg and other places have given him, he says, such a fondness for trees, that a run through a good wood would have been a pleasant change. Another drawback to Bessheim, he says, is that when the snow is soft one is apt to scrape over a good many thinly covered rocks and stones in some places, and a third is the prevalence of north-west winds. But the advantages of the place far outweigh these few drawbacks, and it is likely soon to rival Finse in popularity.

On their return to Christiania the party took train to Trondhjem and steamer to Tromsö, where they got a little ski-ing in bad weather and then returned by steamer to Narvik and took train to Kiruna, where they spent a fortnight ski-ing over rather flat country, mostly in search of Lapp encampments and reindeer. The latter part of the book is devoted mainly to a description of the Lapps of whom they were fortunate enough to see a great many at one of their rare religious meetings.

The book is full of side-lights on the manners and customs of the Norsk people and pays tribute – as all do who know them – to their courtesy and hospitality. Useful information about routes and prices is not lacking, and the following remarks on the art of ski-ing are well worth the attention of a beginner:-

“The ordinary English skier avoids going into woods as much as possible, and yet if he wants to learn to control his ski properly there is no better or quicker method of doing so than by practising runs amongst trees. Moreover, once having attained a certain amount of skill in control of the ski, there is no more fascinating way of putting such skill into practice than this kind of running.

“I have over and over again come across ski-runners who can make very pretty turns of various kinds when on an easy practice-ground and yet who can never utilise these on an expedition. The reason is easy to find. On the practice-ground the skier can choose his own spot on which to make his turn – usually he knows before he reaches it where it is to be, and prepares accordingly. If on nearing his chosen spot he does not feel comfortable or ready he can probably go on running straight until the favourable moment arrives. Then and only then he makes or tries to make his turn, and if he succeeds two or three times he begins to think he has mastered it. When he goes on an expedition he finds that the “favourable” moment seldom occurs and when a turn is necessary he sometimes manages it but more often than not either falls or has to stop. This is disappointing and discouraging but happens to everyone without any exception when learning to ski. But to those who avoid tree-covered slopes it goes on happening for a long time.

“To start with, all turns should be practised on an easy open practice-slope which is neither long nor steep. At first the skier wants a Hat place to start from, and if the slope is short he can slide down, make his turn, and be up again ready for another turn very quickly. Now as this is not a work on how to learn to ski I will not attempt to describe the turns in detail or how to make them. If the reader is interested in the subject let him read Mr. Richardson’s The Ski Runner, or Mr. Caulfield’s How to Ski, in both of which he will find these things fully explained. But once having got the idea of any one turn the way to learn how to use it on tour is to practice it assiduously on every possible occasion. And one of the best ways of doing this is to go and practise short runs among trees, and try to twist in and out of them without stopping. At first no doubt this will be difficult, but later on a run through trees will be found much more interesting than most straight runs across open slopes. All ski-runners like long, straight, open runs. It is a great advantage to learn to like tree work too. The latter is much more of an acquired taste than the former, which is natural to everyone. Not only do the woods afford excellent all-round practice, but also they very often offer good snow and good ski-running when none is to be obtained in open spaces. The snow in woods, being more sheltered from sun and wind, frequently remains in good condition long after the snow in the open has become bad. I think that the best advice that can be offered to would-be ski-runners is to study the excellent English books on ski-running here mentioned, to be very careful to get the correct “style,” or rather that style recommended by the authors of those books and by all good Norwegian runners (called the Norwegian style) and to make it their business to become as proficient as possible in all the turns. But having acquired some skill in turns the ski-runner must be very careful not to overdo the use of them and instead of going fast and straight whenever possible, be for ever twisting and turning, thereby decreasing his speed. It should be his object to go as fast as possible, compatible with safety, and therefore only to use turns to avoid obstacles or to slow up when there is danger ahead. Often a half or even a quarter turn will be sufficient.”

The numerous small but excellent photographs give a good idea of what Norway looks like in winter.

Norway At Home.
By Thomas B. Willson, M.A.

(London: George Newnes, Ltd. pp. xi. and 228.)

Everyone who has been in Norway – and indeed everyone who has only been to Norway (in a tourist pleasure steamer) – will be glad to learn from this useful little work something more of their cousins who live in that pleasant land. As the author reminds us “the Norwegians are truly our kinsmen and are not merely related to us in race but for some centuries at any rate have shared with us they possession of these islands and left their mark indelibly impressed upon our land.”

After a brief description of the physical features of the country the author deals in turn with the Constitution and Government, National Defence, Religion, Literature, Music, Education, Trade, Agriculture, Social Life, Local Government and all the other matters that go to make up the Life History of a State, and on all of them has much to tell that will make the sojourner better able to appreciate the ways of life and the people he meets. That in some things Norway is in advance of – or shall we say different from – most nations is well known. Women, for example, even married women, have the vote, and a whisky and soda is hard to come by, even in Bergen. Small ownership of land is universal and political power is in the hands of the Bonder or farmer class, which, though in feeling strongly conservative, is otherwise strongly democratic. Reserved and quiet like our North Country breed, and like them courteous if met courteously, they share the virtues, the prejudices and often, longo intervallo, the blood of our dalesmen.

To Ramblers the chapters on the Rural Customs, the Fisheries, the Forests, the ways of Travel and especially that on Norway as a playground (where, of course, our Ex-President’s book is described as the book par excellence for all who wish to visit the great mountains of Norway and the vast Glaciers) will especially appeal. Some of us have been to Norway and will continue to go. Those who have once been there always want to go again, though not perhaps every year, for it takes time to efface the memories of the stormy sea that lies between. As one enthusiast has exclaimed “Switzerland we admire, Tirol we like, Italy we worship, Lakeland we cherish, but Norway – we love.”

Oxford Mountaineering Essays.
Edited By Arnold H M. Lunn.

(London: Edwin Arnold. 1912, pp. xi. and 236. 5s. od. net.)

The sport of Mountaineering has been treated in so many different ways, and by so many writers, that it argues some boldness in the youthful contributors to this small volume to strike out a new line and to assert, as the Editor does in his Preface, that “as subjects for literary artistic and philosophic inquiry the mountains are far from exhausted – that the basic emotions of the hills, at once bold and subtle, remain an almost untouched field, and many a curious bypath in the psychology of mountaineering has yet to be explored.” The result, however, goes far to justify the venture.

The first essay, by Mr. Michael T. H. Sadler, on “An Artist of Mountains – C. J. Holmes,” which, by the way, appears also in the current number of the Climbers’ Club Journal, is a whole-hearted eulogy of Cézanne, the head of that Post-Impressionist – or as he prefers to call it “Fauvist” – school of painters, whose exhibition in 1910 so fluttered the artistic dovecots, and of his disciple, Prof. C. J. Holmes. We cannot pretend to follow him in conclusions which would make a call on the broadest minded of artists. It may be true that “in his pictures and “drawings of the English Lakeland he (Mr. Holmes) has externalized” (horrid word!) “an aspect of mountain scenery which is “quite new,”, and that he paints “mountains not so much as they actually look but as one remembers them to be, and this is the same as saying that repudiation of illusion or naturalism enables him to suggest the ‘mountainness’ of the mountain, the vague essential something which tells me it is a mountain,” and that by adopting the black border round the object in his pictures “he is able to dispense with chiaroscuro – almost with perspective,” but we still prefer the Lakeland sketches by Turner in Room X. of the Tate Gallery.

A shower of stones sent down by chamois sets Mr. Julian S. Huxley moralizing on the everchanging character of the “everlasting” hills and the littleness of man. Mr. Norman Young passes the Greek poets through a small sieve to show that they did not know a mountain when they saw it, or only saw it as a rampart for the sea or a resting place for the clouds, but concludes that our mountain worship is only “a new epiphany of the spirit of Hellas and the spirit will be the same, even though the men of later ages find their romance beneath the seas whereon the Greeks sought it, or above the mountains in which our quest is set.” Mr. H. E. G. Tyndale compares in quaint aphorisms the mountaineer to a pilgrim, and concludes that the mountaineer will learn two things by experience, viz.: that ” wherever he may find himself he can advance many reasons for and against every proposal, as conscience-free as the pilgrim himself, calling in prudence to support equally his bold or his lazy wishes, which is a dangerous thing for all climbers, as Mr. Worldly Wiseman knows,” and, again, that ” the secret of a true holiday lies, not in the abandonment of everything familiar in search of distraction but in taking up some fresh and absorbing interest which will continue from one holiday to another.” In “Passes” Mr. N. T. Huxley is profoundly introspective. “Your true mountain lover,” he says, “professes himself a mystic: he is one of those that ‘live by p1aces,’ and he waits upon the fruition of those moments in which his senses give him a sudden feeling of fellowship with his surroundings. . . Only in isolation from his fellows from science and from the interference of intelligence, when he adopts a ‘wise passivity’ of mere sensation, is this sense of fellowship granted him; and among the peaks, under the spell of his rhythmical bodily movements, he and the silent mountains stand face to face as pure living sensation and lifeless matter, and each finds in the other a mysterious completion.”

Mr. H. R. Pope has some wise words about the vulgarization of our British hills. “The great god Pan is very gracious to his worshippers, but not when they come in crowds. Some of our hills have been turned into a sort of suburban playground of our northern towns, and there are times when we seem to detect the staleness of the suburbs even in the windy heights.” Ramblers and “Rocky-fellers” may jib a little at this but they will find in his praise of British hill climbing some new arguments for their sport.

“Rock Climbing at Oxford” written, doubtless, by someone still in statu pupillarii, for he prefers to remain anonymous, has many picturesque touches; and in “The Mountain of Youth,” the Editor winds up the series with a pleasant autobiography of his own mountain experiences in humorous vein not untouched with sadness, from which we are glad to gather that his accident has not altogether stopped his climbing.

We could have said much more about this pleasant volume, if space allowed: suffice it to say that we welcome its contributors into the Brotherhood of the Mountains.

The Dolomites.
By S. H. Hamer.

(London: Methuen & Co. 1910. pp. xi. and 305.)

To the mountaineer the most interesting part of this volume is that by Mr. W. J. Williams, A.C., on “Climbing in the Dolomites,” in which he will find a short account of the special characteristics and history of Dolomite climbing, and of the different ways of all the principal peaks. With this and the more detailed guide-books to which he is referred he will have no difficulty in planning out a tour in this fascinating district, and when he has accomplished it will be able to take sides in the still vexed question whether, as their lovers assert, the Dolomites afford the finest climbing in Europe or no. The botanist and geologist also will find the chapters in their respective hobbies of great value. The rest of the book appeals rather to the mere tourist or rambler and betrays on every page the wonder and delight which he, like the author, must surely feel at the bizarre shapes and marvellous colouring of these strange torri and cima, so strange and grotesque that ‘it requires the coloured illustrations to make him believe them possible. These illustrations indeed, by Mr. Harry Rowntree, are perhaps the best part of the book, if indeed they are not its raison d’être. Each one is a feast of colour, and a comparison with the colour photographs which Mr. Inglis Clark recently showed to the Club and has since reproduced in the Alpine Journal shows that they are not exaggerated. They form an interesting contrast to the chromolithographs of Messrs. Gilbert and Churchill’s “Dolomites” (1864) and Miss Edwards’s “Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys ” (1875) and shew what an advance in book illustration has been achieved by the three-colour process.

The sketch map printed on the inside cover is a method which all such books of travel would do well to copy.

Alpine Flowers And Gardens.
Painted And Described By G. Flemwell.

(London: A. & C. Black. 1910. pp. xiv. and 167.)

In dealing with this book a comparison with Mr. Farrer’s “Among the Hills” is almost inevitable. Both are adorned with colour pictures of great beauty – some of Mr. Flemwell’s are exquisite, though he confines himself to landscapes, where the flower-studded foreground serves as a frame to some well-known peak in the distance, and he has no detailed drawings of individual plants; and both show a close first-hand knowledge of the subject. But Mr. Farrer’s anecdotal method of description is certainly more arresting and affords more scope for detail and his style is all his own.

M. Henri Correvon in the Preface describes this book very justly as “un poeme, un chant à la louange de la nature alpine et alpestre,” and the author writes as a poet of the Alps in their season’s garb – spring, summer and autumn in turn. More strictly scientific are his chapters on “Where do Alpines begin?” and “Characteristics of Alpine Plants,” in which latter he inclines to the theory that “the real primary and original meaning of the colours markings, nectar and scent of flowers is not to attract insects but to deter grazing and browsing animals,” although he admits the only animal to be deterred was the mammoth, but suggests they have been amiably retained for the delight and use of the insects. He remarks also on the astonishing depth of the roots and describes the keen struggle for existence waged by Alpine plants and their contempt for added “comforts” such as manure. “Born in hardship, as children of hardship, they have so attuned themselves to harsh conditions as to make of these the very mainspring of their joy in life.”

The successful work done by the Swiss “Association pour la Protection des Plantes,” now merged in “Heimatschutz” in stopping the removal of Alpine plants by collectors, professional or amateur, and by peasants and tourists is described, and we are told that the Society’s efforts to substitute the sale of the seeds for the plants themselves have been largely successful. A description of the Society’s own rock gardens on the Rochers de Naye and at Bourg St. Pierre (where, by the way, we remember having a delightful nap in 1893), and some hints on ” the science of putting two and two together in order to make four, in the culture of Alpines away from their wild conditions,” conclude the volume.

True Tales Of Mountain Adventures.
By Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond.

(London: T. Fisher Unwin. 1906. 3rd Impression. pp. xvi. and 291.)

The fact that this is a third edition shows that the increase in more recent tales of mountain adventure has not diminished the public demand for these older stories culled for the most part from the Alpine classics and annotated by one who has herself spent many strenuous seasons in the Alps. But there are many more such stories between the sober covers of the Alpine Journal and elsewhere, not accessible to the general public, and a second series would find a warm welcome.

Rambles In The Black Forest
By J. A. R. Wylie.

(London: Mills & Boon. pp. viii. and 325. 6s. od.)

The authoress of this pleasant work states at the outset that it is “for the rambler, not the tourist, who is a very different person. The genuine tourist never rambles, he tours, and therein lies the fundamental and all-important difference. The world is full of tourists, some of them are rich and laden with much be-labelled boxes, some of them are poor – you meet them on the dusty highways, burdened with heavy knapsacks, hatless, coatless, with hot red faces, which they lift a moment in order to contemplate you lying in the shade of the trees. Rich and poor, all these people are ‘touring,’ and the tourist has only one object in life, to ‘do’ something, to ‘get’ somewhere, and to have the right to say he has ‘done it,’ or ‘got there’ all on foot, or all in a motor car, or all in a first class sleeping compartment, just as his particular ambition tends.”

With this, by way of preface in praise of Rambling, the authoress proceeds, after giving a general description of the Black Forest and its history, to give a pleasant and picturesque account of a summer’s ramble taken by herself and a friend in that delightful country, with its stately pleasure resorts like Baden-Baden and Triberg, its mediæval towns like Freiburg and quiet villages like Gutach and its homely ‘cure places’ like Rippoldsau. The Germans are indeed to be envied such a charming playground and they make full use of it. Other nations, we are told, prefer overcrowded Switzerland and an Englishman in the Black Forest is rarely seen, which is a pity; for without subscribing to the authoress’s opinion that not only can the Black Forest stand comparison with Switzerland but that it is incomparable, there must be many who would End in its quieter features and homelier life a pleasant change after the standardized beauties and table d’hôtes of Lucerne and Chamonix.

There are numerous excellent photographs and some colour plates.

The West Riding Of Yorkshire.
By Joseph E. Morris, B.A.

(London: Methuen & Co. pp. xviii and 569. 3s. 6d. net.)

This is an excellent little book; one to be carried in the pocket of every rambler – it only weighs 10½ oz. It does not pretend to be a guide-book with inns, distances, &c., but it gives in alphabetical arrangement a short description of every place in the Riding that offers anything of interest in natural scenery, architecture or history. The author is openly impatient of everything in the way of factory or mine, although he has not hesitated to penetrate the “worst part of the Yorkshire coalfield” to visit some ancient monument. And he appeals to a rambler’s heart when, after demarcating the spoilt and the unspoilt beauties of the Riding, he exclaims:- “What matter if the bottom be defiled by ugly mills, if the highways be infested by vile electric tramways, if the waters of the brooks and rivers run fishless and polluted? Always it is possible to escape from this corruption to the solitude and silence of the ridges.”

For anyone who wants an intelligent description of, say, Fountains, Kirkstall or Bolton, Mr. Morris’s book is invaluable, and before starting on a trip it is easy to look out one’s object and take the book along.

The author’s leanings are on the whole perhaps towards mediæval architecture; there is for example an excellent and much needed description of Harewood Castle and Church, but nothing about Harewood House; two pages about Cowthorpe Church, but nothing of the Cowthorpe Oak. He might also have let himself go a little more on the side of the literary associations. Oakwell Hall, near Birstall, is an interesting Jacobean house, but the gracious spirit of Shirley Keeldar still lends it its greatest charm; Arncliffe, beautiful as it is for situation, deserves to be remembered also as the Vendale of Kingsley’s “Water Babies,” and Rylstone as the home of Emily Norton and the White Doe.

An unpleasant duty remains. I am forced from internal, evidence to conclude that Mr. Morris has never heard of the Yorkshire Ramblers and their underground exploration. This is easily remedied. He must be conducted along Long Churn Cave and lowered into Helln Pot, and then he will no longer say of it: “There is nothing to be seen save the yawning mouth of a vertical shaft, down which it is impossible to look.” But it is only fair to add that he considers both Helln Pot and Gaping Ghyll “infinitely grander than Eldon Hole in Derbyshire, though they may lack the literary associations of this last, and the mock heroic verses of Cotton and Hobbes.” We had hoped our Journal had a wider circulation. But speaking seriously, Mr. Morris has laid all lovers of the West Riding under a deep obligation and we thank him for it.

J. J. B.

Nooks And Corners Of Yorkshire.
By J. S. Fletcher.

(London : Eveleigh Nash. pp. ix. and 304, with Map.)

Mr. Fletcher, who delighted so many lovers of Yorkshire by his beautiful work “Picturesque Yorkshire” has now put us still more in his debt by this handy volume. His plan is to avoid, to a great extent, the “beauty spots” that are in all the guide-books and to lead us rather to the little corners of the county, familiar perhaps to us, but unknown to strangers. The author deals with his subject by routes – The Great North Road, the several rivers, the Coast, Sheffield, North-East Yorkshire, the East Riding – and of all he has something new to tell us, avoiding archæological austerity but never descending to the mere “chatty” facility of some popular works. Many of our readers, as Airedale men, must needs think well of one who speaks up thus for Airedale:- “Then” (i.e., at Castleford) “has the Aire lost its character and is looked down upon by folks who rave about the clearness of the Swale or the Tees. But for all that, the banks of the Aire have such features of interest that no man can say he knows Yorkshire unless he knows them.” This is the spirit of the book and we heartily commend it to our readers, although we have to deplore the fact that Gaping Ghyll and Helln Pot are never mentioned, and of Great Almscliffe it is only said “On the summit of it, a high point which commands a view of the country for miles and miles around, is a group of rocks which appear to have been the scene of Druidical rites.” Our activities have been misunderstood!

J. J. B.

The Alpine Ski Club Guides.
The Bernese Oberland: Part I.
By Arnold H. M. Lunn.

(London: Horace Marshall & Son. pp. vi. and 135.)

Mountain Climbers have long found the pocket “Alpine Guides” indispensable for their summer wanderings and now we welcome the first English Pocket Guide for Ski Climbers.

“Ski-runners,” as the author in his preface very properly remarks, “who rely on guide-books based solely on summer “mountaineering are liable to come to serious harm,” and this work, besides its positive virtue of pointing out the best routes practicable for ski, has the negative one of warning ski-runners against routes which “though perfectly safe in summer are death-traps in winter.”

Mr. Lunn describes very fully all the excursions which can be made from Montana, Kandersteg, Adelboden, Zweisimmen, Gstaad, Villars and Chateau d’Oex, and also the routes connecting these places which have been found practicable. In summer a wandering party may cross from valley to valley and be sure of finding some kind of shelter for the night, but in winter one must make sure that there is an hotel or hut “open” before breaking cover from one’s well-warmed “winter-house”; and this work must, of course, be read along with the information which varies from year to year, as to hotels, huts, &c.

We have neither the space nor the experience to say whether the routes described are the best and can only advise members of our Club (which has so recently added ski-ing to its objects) Solvitur ambulando.

There is an excellent chapter on Avalanches, Snow Conditions and Ski-mountaineering in general.

J. J. B.

On Cambrian And Cumbrian Hills.
Pilgrimages To Snowdon And Scawfell.
By Henry S. Salt.

(A. C. Fifield, 13, Clifford’s Inn, E.C. 1911. 1s. od. net.)

The object of this little book – one with which every Rambler will, or ought to, sympathize – is to emphasize the fact that mountains, besides being the playground of the climber have another function, viz., the culture of “that intellectual sympathy with untamed and primitive Nature which our civilization threatens to destroy.” The author addresses himself mainly to the “small handful of enthusiasts whose concern with the mountains, as compared with that of the rock climber, is of a less venturesome but not less personal kind, devotees who have made it their pleasure to become intimately versed in the mountain lore and to whom the numberless moods and phases of the hills are more familiarly known than to many expert cragsmen.”

The chapters dealing with the Snowdon massif and the Scawfell district are written with intimate and sympathetic knowledge, the result of many years’ experience of them under all conditions, and the author skilfully contrasts the characteristics of the two groups:-” If angry grandeur, as has been said, is the feature of the Carnarvonshire mountains that of the Cumbrian Fells may be described as friendly grouping. Unlike the proud oligarchies of Snowdon and the Glyders we see here a free and equal democracy, a brood of giant brothers, linked together with rocky arm in arm, and with no crowned heads claiming marked predominance over their fellows.”

In one respect, however, they are, he points out, similar; for on every side except the east “their horizons extend to the sea and both possess the same great charm, lacking in the Alps and other continental ranges, of overlooking a coast line broken by shallow estuaries, where at low tide there is an expanse of gleaming red sands with the plain of dim water in the rear.”

The remaining chapters which deal with the pleasures of the Heights, the Barren Hillside, Wild Life on the Hills and Human Sympathies are full of charm and insight, whilst that entitled “Slag-heap or Sanctuary” is a strongly worded argument against the vulgarization – an ugly word, but ugly deeds call for ugly words – of the delicate beauties of our strictly limited supply of mountain beauty. Some part of this process may be checked by private effort, but the author sees only one thorough solution of the problem, and that is to “nationalize such districts as Snowdonia, Lakeland, the Peak of Derbyshire and other public holiday haunts, and convert them into mountain sanctuaries under a council of mountaineers and naturalists and nature lovers who understand and reverence them, with the instruction that they shall so administer their charge as to add to the present happiness and permanent wealth of the nation” – an alluring if Utopian prospect. It would be a step towards it if the mineral, sporting and water rights could be bought out.