Burlingham left Paris near the end of 1912 and returned to London, where he was soon hired by the British and Colonial Kinematograph Company. In 1913 the company assigned him to travel to Switzerland to film ski-jumping, curling, sleighing, and other Alpine winter sports around St. Moritz. Equipped with a bulky hand-cranked movie camera, a half-plate still camera, and a set of tripods, he also recorded his trek at higher elevations through deep snow at the Bernina Path, as well as ascents of the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, and the Jungfrau. He continued from those sites to southern Italy, capturing additional scenic footage as he traveled to Mount Vesuvius. There he filmed on December 21, 1913 a deep descent into the volcano's interior. Burlingham and his three Italian assistants were nearly asphyxiated by sulphuric fumes as they used ropes to lower themselves down over 1200 feet to the bottom of the cone. In addition to releasing Burlingham's films The Ascent of the Matterhorn and Descent into the Crater of Vesuvius, the British and Colonial Company between the latter half of 1913 and August 1914 distributed to English cinemas 21 much shorter travelogues shot by him. Most of those short subjects, which averaged only about seven minutes in running time, consisted of tourist-style depictions of the countryside and resorts in southern France, Switzerland, and in the lake district of northern Italy.