In
this list are over a dozen volumes describing different ascents of a
single mountain, and that not the most difficult. There are
publications of learned societies on geology, entomology, paleontology,
botany, and one volume of _Philosophical and Religious Walks about Mont
Blanc_. The geology of the Alps is a most perplexing problem. The
summit of the Jungfrau, for example, consists of gneiss granite, but
two masses of Jura limestone have been thrust into it, and their ends
folded over.

It is the habit, of the Germans especially, to send students into the
Alps with a case for flowers, a net for butterflies, and a box for
bugs. Every rod is a schoolhouse. They speak of the "snow mountains"
with ardent affection. Every Englishman, having no mountains at home,
speaks and feels as if he owned the Alps. He, however, cares less for
their flowers, bugs, and butterflies than for their qualities as a
gymnasium and a measure of his physical ability. The name of every
mountain or pass he has climbed is duly burnt into his Alpenstock, and
the said stock, well burnt over, is his pride in travel and a grand
testimonial of his ability at home.

There are numerous Alpine clubs in England, France, and Italy. In the
grand exhibition of the nation at Milan the Alpine clubs have one of
the most interesting exhibits. This general interest in the Alps is a
testimony to man's admiration of the grandest work of God within reach,
and to his continued devotion to physical hardihood in the midst of the
enervating influences of civilization. There is one place in the world
devoted by divine decree to pure air. You are obliged to use it.
Toiling up these steeps the breathing quickens fourfold, till every
particle of the blood has been bathed again and again in the perfect
air. Tyndall records that he once staggered out of the murks and
disease of London, fearing that his lifework was done. He crawled out
of the hotel on the Bell Alp and, feeling new life, breasted the
mountain, hour after hour, till every acrid humor had oozed away, and
every part of his body had become so renewed that he was well from that
time. In such a sanitarium, school of every department of knowledge,
training-place for hardihood, and monument of Nature's grandest work,
man does well to be interested.

You want to ascend these mountains? Come to Zermatt. With a wand ten
miles long you can touch twenty snow-peaks. Europe has but one higher.
Twenty g