oin in the thoughtless generalizations about the
obtuseness of the Alpine peasant which have disfigured some of the
literature of climbing. These climbers have shown infinitely greater
obtuseness before Alpine realities than the peasants derided by them.
True, a star may compete in vain with a cheese in suggesting visions of
joy, but our supercilious climbers forget that their admiration of
nature's marvels is generally built up on a substratum of cheese--or the
equivalent of cheese--plentifully supplied by the labour of others.
There is another class of climbers who idealize the peasant and the
guide, and who write of Alpine peasant-life as if it were nothing but a
series of perilous ascents nobly undertaken for the advancement of
humanity.

I can understand the indifference of the peasant to the visions around
him. After a hard day's scything or woodcutting on slopes so steep that
the resistance of one's hob-nailed boots seems like that of soft soap, I
have felt profoundly healthy and ready to go to bed without listening to
any lyrics on the Alps. And even the thought of Tennyson's "awful rose
of dawn" would not have roused me before the labour of the next day.

But we--how proud I am of that "we"!--who have chosen hard labour on the
mountain know something which the mere visitors (though they be members
of many Alpine Clubs) know not. We have a sense of home which no other
habitation can impart--a passionate love of the soil, a unity with the
little patch that is our own, bringing joys undimmed by any descriptions
of other-worldly possessions. Our trees may be wrecked by an avalanche,
our garden plot may be obliterated by a land slip; the stone walls we
build up in defiance of the snow are always pulled down by mountain
sprites. Our agriculture is precarious, and every carrot is bought by
the sweat of our brow. The struggle keeps pace with our love--there is a
tenfold sweetness in the fruit we reap. And when fate compels us to
leave our mountains we are pursued by restlessness. We know no peace, no
home elsewhere. We do assume the airs of Victor Hugo's cretin when we
are placed face to face with the riches of Croesus or the splendours
of Pharaoh.

We must reluctantly admit that the phenomenon of cold indifference to
mountain scenery may occur without any corresponding degree of idiocy.
In the _Playground of Europe_, Leslie Stephen told us that a man who
preserves a stolid indifference in face of mountain beauty mus