“THE WORLD of ice and of eternal snow, as unfolded to us on the summits of the neighbouring Alpine chain, so stern, so solitary, so dangerous, it may be, has yet its own peculiar charm. Not only does it enchain the attention of the natural philosopher, who finds in it the most wonderful disclosures as to the present and past history of the globe, but every summer it entices thousands of travellers of all conditions, who find there mental and bodily recreation. While some content themselves with admiring from afar the dazzling adornment which the pure, luminous masses of snowy peaks, interposed between the deeper blue of the sky and the succulent green of the meadows, lend to the landscape, others more boldly penetrate into the strange world, willingly subjecting themselves to the most extreme degrees of exertion and danger, if only they may fill themselves with the aspect of its sublimity.” — Hermann von Helmholtz, from his lecture on ice and glaciers