The Alps
An Alpine Journey. By F. S. Smythe. (Gollancz. 16a.)
TIER titles of these two new Alpine books are a fair indication of the difference in their contents. A great pilgrimage sums up the aims and efforts of a lifetime ; a man can begin and end a considerable number of journeys ; in either case we are led into high and pleasant places.
Among a host of great foreign mountaineers Dr. Kugy is an outstanding figure for what he has done, for what he is, and for this book that he has written. From the Karst uplands by his home in Trieste, he looked across the sea towards the peaks that form the background in the pictures of Titian and Bellini, and when you have read his book you will know that he is telling the simple truth when he says : " The dreams of my youth there created a home for my spirit." Those peaks are the Julian Alps, and though Kugy has climbed in every part of the Alps from the Dolomites to Monte Viso, it is the Julian Alps that will always be specially connected with his name. In the 'eighties he was nearly caught by the fascination of the specialized climbing of the Dolomite pinnacles, but is
visit to Switzerland in 1886 taught him the more excellent way : " There I realized at once that the splendid combination of rock, ice and snow in the Western Alps provided an incomparably gieater and richer field for the mountaineer than the detailed work on Dolomite towers. They demand a far greater all-round develop- ment, a much wider outlook from the climber. But to my mind they give also a far richer reward ; a landscape greater and more varied, and furthermore the fascination of the eternal snows and of greater absolute height. From being a rock-climber one grows to be a mountaineer."
Dr. Kugy is full of humour, he is always interesting, and quick to find the poetry and music that lay about his path. He was not one of those who hurry off their peak to make a record time when there were precious memories to be gathered by delay, as in a memorable winter day on Triglav : " Tired, sleepy, excited as we were by all the deeds and visions of the day, we stood still at times and listened, leaning on our aires." Nearly all Kugy's big climbs were done with first- rate guides, and no writer has ever been more generous to the great qualities or to the frailties of the men to whom so much was owed.
Captain J. P. Farrar, one of the best mountaineers England has produced, with a wide knowledge of Alpine literature in all languages, said of Dr. Kugy's book, when it appeared as Aus den: Leben eines Bergsteigers, in 1925 : "If ever a book deserved translation, this does ; but where can we fmd a man not merely to translate the word, but to reproduce the author, his very self?" The man has been found. Moreover, Mr. Tyndale has succeeded in keeping within the bounds demanded by our English reserve the outpourings of the soul of an enthusiast that are possible in the German language. It is a valuable piece of work to have permitted English readers to share the great deeds and the great thoughts of this lovable giant among mountaineers.
Mr. Smythe's book, apart from a few interludes of high adventure at other times and seasons, is a description of a jOurney through Switzerland from the Eastern frontier to Montreux made in the spring of the present year. His pen must have run like a well-waxed ski, and the reader may wonder whether the book came from the journey or the journey from the book. Much of the information given is clearly meant for a larger public than that which can be said to know Switzerland well. For any but strangers to that country the book would lose little if what is said about its people, its inns, its tunnels and its military defences were left nut. It is what happens to Mr. Smythe when he is far away from these things that his readers want to know, and they will find plenty to instruct and interest them. The innocent,
whose knowledge of what is done on ski is learned from ad- .vertisements of winter sports, will be surprised to read how large a proportion of the tour was spent with these wooden 'wings carried angel-fashion on the back, and how short and fleeting were the moments when " the very spirit of motion awoke in the slender runners . . . . a flight so smooth that I was scarcely conscious of attachment to the snow." The experienced will enjoy his mountain craft and smile approv:.
ingly to note the signs of maturing judgement in his precepts. It is brave of Mr. Smythe to produce the `slogan' : "Scrap all guise-books and away with all guide-book writers" between two detailed accounts of new climbs in the Oberland, with an illustration of one of the routes marked by crosses. But he Must know how few men would adopt it.
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