the unforgiving weather stopped me. I was able, anyway, to pass through the Dent du Géant, and to climb the Monte Bianco.The following year I was ready to begin my excursions with two of my schoolmates, and I made the march recorded in Across Country from Thonon to Trent (printed privately) Mrs Freshfield was an author herself and her publications included "Alpine Byways" and "A Tour of the Grisons". Valeria Azzolini wrote about her in I resoconti di viaggio di Freshfield ("Freshfield's Travel Journals"): Lover of the mountain in the youngest and truest sense, hurry was unknown to her because it wasn't really reaching the top which insterested her, but the captivation of the landscapes she encountered on the path, and thus the hours she spent in that enjoyment.Apart from the members of the family, there was another protagonist in Mrs Freshfield's narrations: the guide, Michel Alphonse Couttet. And it was surely in those years that the young Freshfield understood the importance, in every mountain action, of the presence of a good guide. Freshfield believed in good companionship more than the physical exercise when climbing. When he had almost reached the end of his career, he stated: My highest ambition has never been to spend my days in strenuous exercises to develop my muscles. No other mountaineering moment was instead more appreciated by me than that in which I could enjoy the landscape, while the others had to open a path. In his first work, The Italian Alps (1875), he abandoned himself to enjoying the mountains, writing with an elegant descriptive ability. He repeatedly refined his drafts about his excursions and mountaineering, like an ante litteram correspondent. This made him one of the best prepared and finest 19th century linguists in the UK to write about exploring Italy. As an instinctive and inspired narrator, he reported ecstatically on all the mysterious wonders of the Alps. He wanted to hare these with the rest of Europe and described the characteristics of the Alps with unrivalled sharpness. His descriptions were from all angles – poetic, ethnographic, and scientific. Letting the reader into the atmosphere of the Giudicarie Alps he noted: The low elevation of the valleys, their sunny exposure, and the gentle slope of their hillsides, give the scenery an air of richness rarely found at the base of great snow-mountains. The frequent and gay-looking villages, the woods of chestnuts, the knots