highest of the two, it will appear that
there is something in the substance of my lamentations unworthy of an
intellectual being. Let me try. By way of preface, however, I admit that
mountaineering, in my sense of the word, is a sport. It is a sport
which, like fishing or shooting, brings one into contact with the
sublimest aspects of nature; and, without setting their enjoyment before
one as an ultimate end or aim, helps one indirectly to absorb and be
penetrated by their influence. Still it is strictly a sport--as strictly
as cricket, or rowing, or knurr and spell--and I have no wish to place
it on a different footing. The game is won when a mountain-top is
reached in spite of difficulties; it is lost when one is forced to
retreat; and, whether won or lost, it calls into play a great variety of
physical and intellectual energies, and gives the pleasure which always
accompanies an energetic use of our faculties. Still it suffers in some
degree from this undeniable characteristic, and especially from the
tinge which has consequently been communicated to narratives of mountain
adventures. There are two ways which have been appropriated to the
description of all sporting exploits. One is to indulge in fine writing
about them, to burst out in sentences which swell to paragraphs, and in
paragraphs which spread over pages; to plunge into ecstasies about
infinite abysses and overpowering splendours, to compare mountains to
archangels lying down in eternal winding-sheets of snow, and to convert
them into allegories about man's highest destinies and aspirations. This
is good when it is well done. Mr. Ruskin has covered the Matterhorn, for
example, with a whole web of poetical associations, in language which,
to a severe taste, is perhaps a trifle too fine, though he has done it
with an eloquence which his bitterest antagonists must freely
acknowledge. Yet most humble writers will feel that if they try to
imitate Mr. Ruskin's eloquence they will pay the penalty of becoming
ridiculous. It is not every one who can with impunity compare Alps to
archangels. Tall talk is luckily an object of suspicion to Englishmen,
and consequently most writers, and especially those who frankly adopt
the sporting view of the mountains, adopt the opposite scheme: they
affect something like cynicism; they mix descriptions of scenery with
allusions to fleas or to bitter beer; they shrink with the prevailing
dread of Englishmen from the danger of overstep