MOUNTAINS' POPULARITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 95, 24 April 1939, Page 6

MOUNTAINS' POPULARITY.

Mountains are of comparatively redent popularity'. In the Middle Agee they were looked upon wsth ane, and bo one ventured into their higher regions for fear of meeting evil spirits. Mont Blanc was comparatively unknown until tie eighteenth century,' and the fa mous glacier, the Her de ialace, along with Chanionix. was discovered by two young Englishmen, Windhanj and Pocock. in 1741. A etone at Chamonix bearing am inscription records this fa-et. Mouutaine were not con.sidered ae part of the foeaMty of a landscape, and even Voltaire wrote of the -scenery of. a place at which he was staying that it was beautiful, "provided you do not look towards •the mountains," those mountains being the chain of Mont Blanc. Alexandra Duma's -did ■much to make mountains popular in France. Besides being a great writer he was a great •traveller. At Chamonix he interviewed Jacques Balniat, who in hie youth had been the first to teach the summit of Mont Blanc, and the descriptions the famous author wrote did moro perhaps than anything else to make the mountains around Chamonix popular. Mont Blnne 'became a fashion. Everyone who was anyone had made the journey to Cliamonix to see the Mel- de Glace glacier and Mont Blanc, if not to make the ascent.