IT is well known to all members of our Club, that we are divided into two camps and ranked under two banners— Salvationist and Ultramontane. For a time, and especially at dinner, as Dr Almond observed, it might have been thought that the Ultramontane was the predominant partner, but of late the warlike spirit of the Salvation Army has been aroused. Many and furious have been the assaults on the Ultramontane position. "Endless dissection of the unhappy points of the compass," "O.H.," and such phrases, have become part of the conversational stockin-trade of the Club, so that now it takes some audacity to own oneself, in spirit at least, an Ultramontane, and to write in our Journal from the purely climbing point of view. These remarks do not introduce an account of any peculiarly hazardous or "overhanging" bit of climbing, but only an attempt to explain what, in the writer's opinion, gives the keenest of climbing pleasures.

Mummery, the leader and spokesman of all the Ultramontane clan, has repudiated the suggestion, that because a man enjoys climbing for its own sake, he must be dull to the more subtle pleasures that the mountains have to offer, and he has shown by his own eloquent words how certainly both were combined in himself. One point may be admitted, that the keenest æsthetic and climbing pleasures do

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not run absolutely together in point of time. When a man needs all the mountain knowledge that he has, and all his skill and muscle to take him up the next few feet, he is not likely at that moment to pay much attention, even although the sun may be setting in a flood of red and gold over the sea within his view. If at the last hole in a game of golf a man is putting for a half, he won't at that moment think of the ever-changing sounds and sights of the sea, or of the cloud-shadow that may then be moving across the hill on the opposite side of the loch. Yet who ever heard it advanced that when he goes out on the links he should make sure of a less absorbing occupation, or his æsthetic nature will be stunted. The great charm of mountaineering is that its appeal is so various. There is an opportunity for purely athletic pleasure, and even for the enjoyment of such dull things as topography or mathematics, alongside of the highest emotional and intellectual feelings of which a man is capable. The struggle with the rocks, or the snow down below, is the best of all introductions to the half-hour by the cairn. The man who has come over the Dubh peaks and the "Gap," is at least as likely to fully enjoy a bask in that heaven of the climber, the moss-covered top of Sgurr Alasdair, as he who has injured his temper and his shins by toiling up the Stone Shoot.

Well, after all, what are the points to be sought for in our ideal climb? In my opinion, chiefly four. It should be new, it should be continuous, it should be difficult, and yet once started it should be the easiest available. Difficulty is always relative, and it matters very little what its absolute standard may be-what does matter is that it should be difficult for the climber. Some of my friends might find my favourite climb by no means difficult for them, that doesn't matter-for me, it is quite as difficult as I want. With respect to novelty, too, though the entirely new climb has its own special charm, it detracts very little that others have done a climb before, provided that one doesn't know exactly where and how they did it. The problem set in the form, "There is your mountain, climb it," is a far more fascinating one than that in the form, "There is a climb which has been done, go thou and

do likewise." Probably all will agree that our ideal climb must be continuous. By this I do not mean that it must be without break one continuous wrestle, but that once started it must be carried through or else the goal abandoned and a retreat made. If one can at any moment dodge the difficulties and walk off to the right or to the left, it may be very enjoyable and everything else may be there, but we are not really climbing, only bouldering on the mountains.

Again, our way should be the easiest that we can find. It is in finding the easiest way that the mental stimulus and interest of climbing lies, and the wider the problem the better the climb. In its highest form we should have a whole mountain before us and know of no easy way. As we all know, there is no such mountain in Scotland (except under bad weather conditions), but while this is so, there are many climbs on which if a man is once started, he may spend many hours in the attempt to find the easiest way to the top.

Many and glorious and very near the ideal are the climbs which are to be found in Scotland. I have said in what lies for me the charm of climbing considered in one of its aspects. It is, of course, only one. How much might be said of the purely physical joy of living among the mountains, of walking on the springy turf and the heather, and of feeling under one's hobnails the crackle of frozen snow or the crunch of the rocks, or again, the glorious sensation of the cold swift-rushing wind in a glissade.

Through all, and over all, lie the higher thoughts prompted by so intimate a contact with nature, which, not being gifted with the literary faculty, I must not attempt to declare, yet once more protesting, that he who climbs for climbing's sake and is unfortunately dumb on higher matters, is not therefore insensible to the higher appeal.

THE CLIFFS OF CORRIE ARDER.

BY HAROLD RAEBURN.

CORRIE ARDER, as every one, even in the S.M.C., possibly does not know, is the great north-east corrie of that huge mountain mass called Creag Meaghaidh, which heaves itself up along the north side of Loch Laggan, to a height of 3,700 feet.

Formless and dull as a whole, Creag Meaghaidh yet greatly exceeds Ben Nevis in bulk, although 700 feet lower. I believe our authority on tops calculates that one may take a seven-mile walk along the summit ridge without once descending below the 3,000 foot contour. Despite its bulk, Creag Meaghaidh cannot be ranked with Ben Nevis from a climbing point of view. It possesses, however, in the 1,200 feet rock of the Pinnacle of Corrie Arder, a cliff whose steepness is equalled by nothing on our highest Ben, and a face with gullies and buttresses well worthy of the climber's attention. There is, no doubt, some good scrambling to be obtained in others of the corries of this extensive range, but Corrie Arder is its outstanding feature, and it was to its exploration exclusively that the energies of the expedition whose doings are herein chronicled were directed.

The Rev. A. E. Robertson, in an article entitled "The Creag Meaghaidh Range," S.M.C. Journal, Vol. III., p. 23, was the first of our members to draw attention to the corrie. Our Sassenach authority on Gaelic spelling and pronunciation, seized upon the name in its original form to complete a couplet in his ingenious and educative poem on the mysteries of Gaelic orthography—

"If he's long in the leagaidh,

May tackle Creag Meagaidh ;

Or, task that is hardhoire,

The 'posts' of Corr 'Ard Dhoire ;"

but I do not think that he himself had ever viewed the cliffs save in poetic thought, or scanned their feet, save in Over seven years ago-to be exact, in April 1896a party of three members of the S.M.C. were defeated in

metre.