Cervin, cime exemplaire, by Gaston Rébuffat. Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1965. 221 pages, cover and 24 plates (some double-page) in color; many illustrations, black and white, not only of the mountains, but portraits and reproductions of old and modern engravings.

One does not have to read French to understand the wonder of these pictures, for the Matterhorn speaks perhaps more to the eye than to the ear. The text is divided into five sections: The Unique Mountain, The Attempts to Ascend; The Conquest (Swiss and Italian routes) ; The Reconquest (new techniques and routes; winter ascents) The Mountain Envisioned. The story is not new, but history and narrative even after a lapse of a century, continue to fascinate, and will probably always do so. The pictures add almost a new dimension to those that have already appeared, some of the most magnificent being from the collection of Bradford Washburn.

J. Monroe Thorington