To be just to the time, it must be conceded that security and comfort in travelling are necessary preliminaries to our modern mountain rapture, and in the Middle Ages these were non-existent.  Roads and inns were few; there was danger from robbers as well as weather, so that the prevailing feelings on such journeys were misery and anxiety, not pleasure.  Knowledge of science, too, was only just beginning; botany, geology, and geognosy were very slightly diffused; glacier theories were undreamt of.  The sight of a familiar scene near the great snow-peaks roused men’s admiration, because they were surprised to find it there; this told especially in favour of the idyllic mountain valleys.

Felix Fabri, the preacher monk of Ulm, visited the East in 1480 and 1483, and gave a lifelike description of his journeys through the Alps in his second account.  He said[2]: 

’Although the Alps themselves seem dreadful and rigid from the cold of the snow or the heat of the sun, and reach up to the clouds, the valleys below them are pleasant, and as rich and fruitful in all earthly delights as Paradise itself.  Many people and animals inhabit them, and almost every metal is dug out of the Alps, especially silver.  ’Mid such charms as these men live among the mountains, and Nature blooms as if Venus, Bacchus, and Ceres reigned there.  No one who saw the Alps from afar would believe what a delicious Paradise is to be found amid the eternal snow and mountains of perpetual winter and never-melting ice.’

Very limited praise only extended to the valleys!

In the sixteenth century we have the records of those who crossed the Alps with an army, such as Adam Reissner, the biographer of the Frundsberg, and mention their ‘awe’ at sight of the valleys, and of those who had travelled to Italy and the East, and congratulated themselves that their troublesome wanderings through the Alps were over.  Savants were either very sparing of words about their travels, or else made rugged verses which shewed no trace of mountain inspiration.  There were no outbursts of admiration at sight of the great snow-peaks; ‘horrible’ and ‘dreadful’ were the current epithets.  The aesthetic sense was not sufficiently developed, and discount as we will for the dangers and discomforts of the road, and, as with the earlier travellers to the East, for some lack of power of expression, the fact remains that mountains were not appreciated.  The prevalent notion of beautiful scenery was very narrow, and even among cultured people only meant broad, level country.

B. Kiechel[3] (1585) was enthusiastic about ’the beautiful level scenery’ of Lichfeld, and found it difficult to breathe among the Alps.  Schickhart wrote:  ’We were delighted to get away from the horrible tedious mountains,’ and has nothing to say of the Brenner Pass except this poor joke:  ’It did not burn us much, for what with the ice and very deep snow and horribly cold wind, we found no heat.’  The most enthusiastic description is of the Lake of Como, by Paulus Jovius (1552), praising Bellagio,’[4] In the seventeenth century there was some admiration for the colossal proportions of the Alps, but only as a foil to the much admired valleys.