‘Standing on the verge of another world’ : Romanticism on the Volcano

Hawaiian volcano Mauna Kea that 'Man feels himself as nothing, as if standing on the verge of another world'.0F 1 The summit position is often seen as the ideal location for Romantic selfassertion: think of Wordsworth on Snowdon in the triumphant conclusion to his epic autobiography The Prelude or Byron's evocation of 'He who ascends to mountain-tops' in Canto III of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.1 F 2 For Douglas, however, elevation threatened selfannihilation and transportation into 'another world'.The botanist's comment introduces an alternative culture of climbing and mountain writing that takes place beyond the more studied European locations and that challenges many of the key tropes usually associated with ascent.2F 3 While critical examinations of the Romantic-period literature of mountains and mountaineering have focused primarily on activities undertaken in Europe, the development of cultures of ascent was a global phenomenon, with an extraordinary number of pioneering climbs made in the Himalaya, the Andes, North America, Asia, Australasia, the Pacific, and non-mainland Europe (e.g.Iceland and Tenerife).The Romantic period witnessed numerous first ascents, failed attempts, and assorted mountain adventures around the world, including Joseph Banks's 1772 climb to the volcanic crater of Mount Hekla in Iceland, made after the naturalist's plans to participate in Captain Cook's second voyage collapsed;3 F 4 the first known ascent of a major peak in New Zealand, Mount Sparrman, in 1773 and the first known attempt to climb the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa in 1779, both by members of Captain Cook's expeditions;4 F 5 the Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt's 1806 attempt on Chimborazo in the Ecuadorean Alps, the most notable feat in an impressive mountaineering