The circumstances and spirit of this age do not encourage the pilgrim’s existence; yet enthusiasm and endurance are virtues which do not perish with the pilgrim. Moreover, even if our ideal traveller is found no more, many find an ideal form of travel in mountaineering. There may exist, therefore, some corresponding virtue, some relic of the pilgrim’s security of mind, by reason of which we may call our mountaineer a pilgrim.
What manner of man is this new pilgrim who frequents the mountain-side? Can he indeed be called pilgrim, unless perhaps he is following in the steps of Boniface of Asti, who first ascended a snowy mountain and built a chapel for worshippers? Do we ever find the counterpart of Chaucer’s Knight and Poure Persoun, or even of his Manciple and Miller?
In truth, the perfect mountain pilgrim is as rare as was the genuine humble-minded visitor of shrines. We must look to the Japanese climbers for the finest example:--
‘Clad in white, symbolical of the purity to which they aspire, these ascetic mountaineers make their way, sometimes at the end of several weeks of walking, to the top of their peak. After worship at the shrine of their mountain divinity, they withdraw to some secluded spot.’
Yet even if such a type be exceptional, there may still lie hidden some of the pilgrim’s worth in the ordinary climber. With the latter, as with the older pilgrims, we must separate the sheep from the goats. Pilgrimages were made, not only for spiritual benefit, but also for boasting, as an excuse for an exchange of masters, and in certain instances to annoy the king. Nobody climbs, as far as I know, to annoy any king; but the presence of many men in the Alps and elsewhere is not easily explained without harsh words. For the climber is notoriously an unsatisfactory person, not only to the uninitiated, but to his fellow-enthusiasts.
It is open to all men to become mountain pilgrims. Many, however, in whom the Hill Difficulty arouses no fear, will be content to stop by the wayside and wrestle daily with some Apollyon of a ‘rock problem.’ There are some who find all mountains dull which have no wrong way up, who will talk for hours about a billiard-table traverse, and dismiss the ascent of Mont Blanc from Chamonix in a few contemptuous words; and if they succeed in such endeavours, they are for hailing themselves the lords of all the earth. Had Aristotle witnessed their labours he might have remarked: ‘Such things even a slave may do’; and if I had the arrangement of Dante’s Hell I should put them lower than the man who descended the Breithorn playing on a mouth-organ, although at the time it seemed that he
