John Tyndall

 John Tyndall has been regarded as Ireland's first Great Mountaineer.

Born in Leighlinbridge, Co Carlow, in 1820/21 (he wasn't sure himself), after attending a local National school he joined the Ordnance Survey as a Civil Assistant working in Carlow and Cork before transferring to northern England  during the railway mania of the mid 1840s.  After this he worked briefly as a teacher at Queenwood College in Hampshire before going to Marburg in Germany, taking a doctorate at the University there.  It was from Marburg that he first visited the Alps.  On his return to England he spent a short time at Queenwood school, gave a brilliant lecture to the Royal Institution in 1853 and soon after was appointed as its Professor of Natural Philosophy and took over from Michael Faraday as superintendent there in 1867.

The Ascent of John Tyndall by Roland Jackson is the first major biography for over 70 years, in which he paints a detailed portrait of John Tyndall and his world and describes both Tyndall's scientific achievements and his major mountaineering expeditions.

It was on his return to the Alps in 1856 along with Thomas Huxley for research purposes, that his passion for the mountains really began and although he never neglected the scientific aspects he later declared that 'glaciers and mountains have an interest for me beyond the scientific ones, they have been for me the well-springs of life and joy.'

The Weisshorn is regarded by some as the finest peak in the Alps because of its scale and shape and
relative remoteness.  Its first ascent, in August 1861, along with guides Bennen and Wenger, was Tyndall's finest mountaineering accomplishment - one of the great ascents of the Golden Age.  The mountain had rebuffed a number of previous attempts and on reaching the summit Tyndall was emotionally overwhelmed - 'the delight and exultation experienced were not of Reason or Knowledge, but of Being...in the transcendent glory of Nature I forgot myself as a man.'

Of course he carried out many other mountain exploits.  He was a serious challenger to Edward Whymper in his attempts to climb the Matterhorn and he reached a point on the mountain - the highest before it was finally climbed, Pic Tyndall - that still bears his name.

Tyndall was a prolific author and as well as publishing many works on scientific subjects his books on mountaineering went a long way to popularise the activity. 

Compared to his Alpine climbing his walking/hiking/climbing in Ireland would pale into insignificance.  However, it is recorded that he undertook some adventures here.  In his 'Hours of exercise in the Alps' he has a chapter entitled 'Killarney' where he recounts some of these adventures, including his climb of Eagle Rock, that the local lads would not attempt.  Also, in 1864 he undertook a walking tour in northern Ireland with his friend Tom Hirst and climbed the Slieve League sea cliffs - the first recorded ascent - as well as scrambling on the Antrim headlands.

(see Carloviana, 2020 pp 82)

Read some of John Tyndall's mountaineering works:

Mt Tyndall, USA

Mountaineering in 1861
Glaciers of the Alps
Hours of Exercise in the Alps
Forms of water

He gained worldwide fame through his science and mountaineering, as a result of which numerous geographic features around the world have been named in his honour:

Mount Tyndall (Sierra Nevada, USA)
Mount Tyndall (Tasmania)

Mount Tyndall (New Zealand)

Tyndall Glacier ( Torres del Paine Nat Park, Chile)
Tyndall Glacier and Creek
(Colorado, USA)
Tyndall Glacier (Mt Kenya) 
Tyndall Mountains (Antarctica)

Also;
Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, USA: and
Tyndall, Manitoba, Canada.

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Mrs Tyndall

 Louisa Hamilton was the 30-year-old daughter of a member of parliament, Lord Claud Hamilton,

Louisa

and she married John Tyndall in 1876. She was a descendent of John Hamilton, an Irish Peer whose family owned extensive land in Donegal, Tyrone and Derry/Londonderry.

In Louisa, Tyndall had found someone to share his love of the Alps and after their wedding they went to Bel Alp in Switzerland where they spent two months. 

'Their affectionate behaviour in public...caused Meta Brevoort (an American mountaineer) to remark that they were seen "kissing on one of the spurs of the Sparrenhorn". (The ascent of John Tyndall ; Roland Jackson)

They took walking trips on the Aletsch glacier, climbed the Sparrenhorn and, notably the Aletschorn (4,195m - the second highest in the Bernese Oberland).  This was one of the earliest ascents by a woman. Later she went on to Pontresina and climbed  Piz Languard (3,262m) without him and explored the Roseg Glacier there.

Tyndalls at Bel Alp Hotel

The year after their marriage they built a chalet at Alp Lusgen, above Bel Alp, in a stunning position near the Aletsch Glacier.  They visited their chalet during many summers but there is little record of what were Louisa's accomplishments in the mountains other than that they climbed the Sparrenhorn a number of times and walked extensively in the region.

It was Louisa who caused John Tyndall's death through an accidental overdose of chloral hydrate. Some time after this she arranged the placement of a stone monument to his memory close to their chalet at Alp  Lusgen.  

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Piz Languard
(Wikipedia)

Tyndall's chalet today.
(Courtesy Blatten)            

Richard Cotter

It was in the latter half of the 19^th century, during and after the 'Golden Age of Alpinism' that the exploration of the Alps reached its climax. Invariably, this drive to climb mountains was undertaken by people of substantial means. It required considerable resources to finance travel to the Alps, to spend at least a couple of weeks there and then pay the fees of the local guides and porters in order to attempt a particular climb. These local men who lived in the mountains and were familiar with the terrain may, themselves, have had little inclination to reach summits but through their work with the wealthy 'tourists' they soon became accomplished mountaineers in their own right. Their services as guides allowed them to become summiteers without having the wealth of their employers.

Richard Cotter

It seems unlikely that any Irish man would fit into this category. The impecunious John Tyndall must be ruled out. On his first visit to the Alps he 'got by very cheaply' but by the time he was attempting summits he had significant funds at his disposal.

It is Richard (Dick) Cotter who fits the bill perfectly. He was born in 1842 in Macroom, possibly in the townland of Coolnafiddane (Coolinadane), but in 1849 he was on an emigrant ship, the Bridgetown, from Cork to New Orleans, where they landed on 26^th December 1849 with his mother and siblings along with 260 other passengers. There seems to be some uncertainty about his family – the ship's passenger list indicates that his mother and two sisters accompanied him. Another source claims that he had three brothers before he left for the USA. A father is not mentioned and it seems likely that the family was traveling to join the father, who had already emigrated.

The complete family appears in the US census for 1850 in Springfield, Ohio. The father, James, is a labourer, aged forty four, and Richard, recorded as aged ten, is attending school. The mother, Mary was thirty three and there were three siblings, Ellen (aged 8), John (aged 4) and Mary (aged 2), all born in Ireland What happened to them after that in unclear but James C. Sutton, a rancher and businessman, is recorded as having 'taken Richard from an orphans home in St Louis and gave him a home and such education as the Sutton children received.' He may also have adopted Richard's siblings. At the age of eighteen Richard asked Sutton for permission to go west and seek his fortune in the gold mines, as some of the Sutton boys had already done.

Cotter on tent.  USGS

He didn't succeed in 'striking it rich' but was hired instead as a 'packer' on the California Geological Survey, from 1860-64, under Josiah Whitney its director and they were among the first non native people to visit the now famous Yosemite Valley. Initially he didn't show much skill in the work of packing the mules but learned quickly and became a firm friend of Clarence King, a member of the survey team.

In King's 'Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada' he describes his friend as 'our man-of-all work, to whom science already owes its debt'. As to his character he was 'stout of limb, stronger yet of heart, of iron endurance and of a quiet unexcited temperament...I felt that Cotter was one comrade I would choose to face death with, for I believed there was in his manhood no room for fear or shirk'.

Mt Tyndall from
Shepherd's Pass

Mt Tyndall

 This opinion was tested in 1864. It was during 'the first extensive exploration of the hitherto vaguely known regions of the High Sierra' when together, Cotter and King set out on a five day expedition from the survey's base camp in the Sierras to attempt to climb the highest peaks in the region. The summits had been declared impossible and inaccessible by the pair's companions. Undaunted, they set out with improvised rucksacs, each carrying forty pounds of supplies. They reached what appeared to be the highest summit after much tribulation only to see that there was another, higher peak ( later named Mt Whitney). By their records theirs was, to then, the highest mountain measured in the country. They returned to the camp but not before each had put his life in the hands of the other on the steep granite walls of the Sierras. As King recalled in his book, 'in all my experience of mountaineering I have never known an act of such real, profound courage as this of Cotter's.' 

 Their summit they named Mt Tyndall after the celebrated Irish alpinist. They had been familiar with Tyndall's Alpine exploits through his writing and King wrote to Tyndall informing him of their feat and the naming of the mountain in his honour, even inviting him to visit their camp in the Sierras.......

When the Survey of California was completed in 1864 Cotter joined the Western Union Telegraphic Expedition to British Columbia and Alaska from 1864 to 1867. This was the attempt to provide a telegraph link between Europe and America via Alaska and the Bering Strait. Cotter worked on the Russian American (i.e Alaskan) section of the expedition and wrote a report from Norton Bay on its progress in the Spring of 1866. They had worked through the severe conditions of the Alaskan winter unaware that the work was being superseded by the transatlantic cable that was completed in July 1866.The Russian American project was abandoned in 1867. Despite its apparent failure it has been regarded as the major reason for the purchase of Alaska by the United Sates....

 In a local newspaper article of 1923, L.A. Osborn described the 'Passing of the Placer Miner' noted that 'Cotter lived in a little, low, log cabin..(in Jimtown)...he was the most fearless, bluff, outspoken man I ever knew. He had a deep religious tinge under all his high-fallutingness. He never drank...and has never received credit enough...(for his exploration of the Sierras and Alaska)'.

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Gravestone.  Findagrave.com

Signature. Smithsonian Inst.

People involved (a list with links)

The following are some of the people involved with mountains, mainly during the 19th Century.  There will be further additions to the list in due course.

 John Ball                                                                1 Mary Burtchell

 Charles Barrington                                                 2 Susan Gavan Duffy

 Richard Barrington                                                 3 Elizabeth Hawkins-Whithed

 James Bryce                                                           4 Elizabeth Le Blond

 Edmund Burke                                                       5 Mrs Main

 Arthur David Mc Cormick                                      6 Mary Tighe

 Richard Cotter                                                         7 Beatrice Tomasson  

Frederick Fitzjames Cullinan                                     8 Louisa Tyndall

Maxwell Cormac Cullinan                                         9. Frederica Plunkett                                                  

 Darby Field                                                                                                                        

Tom Fitzpatrick  

Robert Fowler                                                         

Robert James Graves

William Spottswood Green

Ewart Grogan

 Henry Chichester Hart

Brian Merriman

John Palliser

Richard Pococke

Anthony Adams Reilly

Henry Russell

Henry Swanzy

John Tyndall

Buck Whaley

Arthur Oliver Wheeler

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Any women involved?

 Womens participation in sport in general, during the 19th century, was somewhat frowned upon by society.

[The ascent of women, how female mountaineers explored the Alps 1850-1900. Clare A. Roche]

However, in relation to climbing mountains, three names come to mind:

1. Elizabeth Hawkins-Whitshed (26 June 1860 – 27 July 1934;)

Lizzy (Wikipedia)

2. Mrs Main; 

3. Mrs Aubrey le Blond.

4. Beatrice Tomasson

5.Mrs Tyndall

The first three names refer to the same person.  Usually known after her third marriage as Mrs Aubrey Le Blond and to her climbing friends as Lizzie Le Blond, was an Irish pioneer of mountaineering at a time when it was almost unheard of for a woman to climb mountains.  In effect she was 'The first Irish Woman Alpinist'  (see Joss Lynam in IMEHS Journal, Vol 3, pp 11; Mountaineering Ireland  & Frank Nugent - In search of Peaks, Passes...)

She grew up in Greystones, County Wicklow, in the south-east of Ireland, where her father owned quite a bit of land. However, her father then died in 1871, leaving no other children, while she was still a minor, and the Lord Chancellor took her on as his ward.

She who raised in Killincarrick House, Greystones, Co. Wicklow, where her childhood was said to be happy, playing  in the countryside with a devoted mother, and after the death of her father she was left to inherit Killincarrick House along with nearly 2,000 acres of land spreading across Dublin, Meath and Wicklow at the age of eleven years.

At eighteen she entered London society, and shortly afterwards, on 25 June 1879, married Captain Fred Burnaby, soldier, intrepid adventurer, aspiring politician and best-selling author.

Frederick Burnaby
by James Jacques Joseph Tissot
oil on panel, 1870
NPG 2642

The Burnaby’s only child, a son, was born in May 1880. Some months later and reportedly in poor health, Elizabeth left London for Switzerland. 

Her first significant ‘scramble’ was made almost by accident:  having planned a leisurely excursion to the lower slopes of Mont Blanc, she and a woman friend, clad ‘in high-heeled buttoned boots and shady hats’, spontaneously decided to climb further. Having spent the night on the mountain, Elizabeth’s appetite for further adventure was whetted. During the following summer she completed several difficult ascents and scaled Mont Blanc twice. Over the next two decades she spent much of her time in Switzerland, climbing in both winter and summer and making more than one hundred ascents. She defied convention by occasionally climbing without a guide, and in 1900 took part in what is regarded as the first women-only expedition. 

Later in her climbing career, she abandoned Switzerland for the far north, and  over six summers in the Norwegian Arctic notched up a total of thirty-three climbs, twenty-seven of them first ascents. On 17 January 1886 Elizabeth was widowed when Burnaby was killed in battle in the Sudan. Her second husband, Dr John Frederic Main, died in Denver, Colorado in 1892, and in 1900 she married Aubrey Le Blond. 

By this time she had more or less retired from climbing, but she remained one of the sport’s best-known spokeswomen, and in 1907 founded and was elected president of the Ladies’ Alpine Club, the first climbing association for women in the world.  (Rosemary Raughter )

 She was also an author and a photographer of mountain scenery. Many of Lizzie’s photographs were included in her own and others’ publications, while others were used to illustrate her lantern lectures, including one entitled ‘Mountaineering from a woman’s point of view’. She also became involved at an early stage  in film-making: a 1902 catalogue lists ten of her short films, all set in Switzerland,  featuring bob-sleigh racing, tobogganing and figure skating, making her the world’s first mountain filmmaker as well as one of the first female filmmakers.  She was one of the first to photograph winter sports and the first person to make short cine films in 1899 to illustrate the growing popularity of winter sports.

In 1883 Elizabeth Le Blond became the first climber of any gender to publish an English book on winter mountaineering: The High Alps in Winter, part memoir and part how-to guide. Of her motivations for first winter ascents, she wrote: “I was never sure, when starting, whether the thing was practicable or not, and this uncertainty gave the excursion a flavor of excitement which was very enjoyable. Besides (shall I be honest enough to admit it?) to do something which no one else had done is pleasant.”

View a collection of her pictures here: 

Martin and Osa Johnson SAFARI MUSEUM

Some of her works:

The high Alps in winter, or mountaineering in search of health – published 1883 

Mountaineering in the Land of the Midnight Sun

Adventures on the Roof of the World

True Tales of Mountain Adventure: For non-climbers Young and Old

My Home in the Alps

High Life of Towers and Silence

Day In, Day Out. (autobiography).

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Beatrice Tomasson 

Mrs Tyndall  

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 Site Map

Ancient Times.

         Mountains in prehistory.       

Booleying.         Lúnasa.

Before 1800                          Mapping of Ireland

   Brian Merriman.                                                Thomas Colby.                         

   Edmund Burke.                                                 John O'  Donovan.

   Darby Field.     

  Buck Whaley.

 Golden Age                        People          

of Alpinism        

John Ball.                                                            A list with links

John Tyndall.

 Anthony Adams Reilly.

                                                 

                                                                

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Outside the Alps

Bryce.  Wikipedia

 The Golden Age of Alpinism is generally agreed to have ushered in a sustained period of mountain climbing in the Alps that made fashionable the idea of mountaineering as a sporting activity.  In the period between 1854 and 1865 thirty six summits higher than 4,000m (13,000 ft) were first climbed, 31 of them by British parties and their guides: we have seen that a significant number of the climbers were Irish.  

A notable feature of the people undertaking this activity was that they were wealthy.  It required substantial financial resources to travel to the Alps, spend at least a couple of weeks there and to hire the necessary porters and guides to undertake expeditions that may have lasted for a number of days.  John Tyndall's initial foray to the mountains may have been an exception because he 'got by very cheaply' but that was before he did 'serious' climbing.

The local people who climbed summits did so mainly at the behest of the 'wealthy tourists' who employed them as guides and porters because their knowledge and experience gained through hunting and other activities.

Russell. Wikipedia

Cotter

Many of the 'summiteers' wrote of the experiences and the result was that  the interest in climbing mountains spread to many other regions in the years following the Golden Age.  Some of the Irish who were involved in the second half of the 19th Century were the following and not all were wealthy:

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Richard Cotter in North America.

James Bryce in many places

Henry Russell in the Pyrenees.

William Spotswood Green in Canada and New Zealand.

More about all these to follow.

Quaternions and Mountains - Charles Jasper Joly

   There seems to be little connection between Quaternions and Mountains but Charles Jasper Joly was a man who combined a deep knowledge and love of both.  (What are 'quaternions' - you might well ask. According to Wikipedia they are: A type of four-dimensional hypercomplex number consisting of a real part and three imaginary parts and are commonly used in vector mathematics and as an alternative to matrix algebra in calculating the rotation of three-dimensional objects. Quaternions were first described by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space and also have practical uses in applied mathematics, particularly for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations, such as in three-dimensional computer graphics, computer vision, magnetic resonance.)

Born in County Offaly in 1864, at St Catherine's Rectory where his father was Rector, ( The land for the rectory had been provided by the town's landlord Charles William Bury, whose family will enter our story later.)  Joly's first school was in Portarlington before attending

Weissmies (Wikipedia)

 Galway Grammar School and entering Trinity College in 1882 from where he graduated in mathematics and experimental physics in 1886.  After this he went to Berlin to follow his interest in experimental physics in the laboratory of Herman von Helmholtz ( as had John Tyndall, some 30 years earlier). It may have been here that his interest in mountaineering began. He returned to Ireland on the death of his father and his first Alpine exploit seems to have been in 1892 on a visit to Switzerland when he climbed the Weissmies and crossed the Alhubeljoch.

His climbs of that year and the following two seasons were his qualifying achievements for membership of the Alpine Club to which he was elected in 1895 where he was proposed and seconded by two other Irish members and Trinity graduates - George Scriven and William Spotswood Green.

Rock climbing was of special interest and he spent some of his happiest mountain holidays among the the Dolomites around Cortina and San Martino. Despite a delicate appearance he possessed endurance, courage, and a keen sense of humour, once leading a group successfully down from the Eiger in a snowstorm.

In 1897 he was appointed Royal Astronomer of Ireland and lived at Dunsink observatory until his early death from typhoid in 1906.  By then he had published on mathematics and astronomy; one of his most important works was Manual of Quaternions (1905), brought out in the centenary year of Hamilton's birth. 

Alpine Club

For further biographical details see DIB                                Home

William Spotswood Green

  William Spotswood Green was born 10 September 1847 in Youghal, Co. Cork,  the only son and eldest  of six children of Charles Green, JP, merchant of Youghal, and his wife Catherine Frances, daughter of Walter Fitzsimons. 

Educated at Rathmines School, Dublin (1859–61),  Midleton College (1861–7), and TCD (1867–71), he spent his childhood in the family home on the seafront in Youghal, where an obsession with boats, the sea, and fishing began.

His first written observations on natural history date from this period and include records of distribution of molluscs in Youghal Bay. 

His first climbing expedition abroad was in 1869, when, at the age of 21, he went to Switzerland with his friend J.S.Lyle.  He intended to climb Monte Rosa but his guide accidently burned the soles of his only boots.  He recorded little about this expedition except to say that 'I returned home feeling that a whole new world had opened up for me'.

The following year he was in Switzerland again with Lyle and his own cousin Henry Swanzy.  As well as doing a long walk of about 100Km they climbed Monte Rosa, Aiguille Bricola, Sparrenhorn, Finsteraarhorn and returned to Ireland on 31 of August.

After graduating in 1871 he took off to Norway's Lofoten area that was then largely unexplored and later became a popular mountaineering destination.  He had set his sights on climbing Higravstinden but seems to have made the first ascent of  a lower summit.

On Aoraki

Ordained deacon of the Church of Ireland in 1871 and to the priesthood the following year and was appointed curate of Kenmare  from where he moved to Carrigaline  in 1878.

Aoraki, or Mount Cook (3,754m) as it was then called, is the highest summit in New Zealand and this is where Green focused his attention.  Along with two Swiss guides he reached, almost, to the summit in what turned out to be an epic of survival in extreme weather conditions. in 1882.

Returning to Ireland he wrote an account of the expedition  (The High Alps of New Zealand) and lectured on it to the Royal Irish Academy (R.I.A) and the Royal Geographical Society (R.G.S).

Green's cousin and climbing partner of earlier years was a member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and attended its convention in Western Canada.  He returned with tales of magnificent and almost untouched mountains.

In 1888 the cousins made up what was perhaps the first solely Irish expedition team to explore and map any mountain range outside of Europe.  To Green, it must have seemed as if he was upholding the standard of Ball, Tyndall and Adams-Reilly during the Golden Age of Alpinism.  (R.W Sandford).

Selkirks.

                                                                        

As part of their surveying they climbed as many summits as they could in the time available and named Mounts Dawson, Fox, Donkin, Deville, Macoun and Perley Rock.   Two peaks were later named Mount Green and Mount Swanzy.

His account of the expedition was published as 'Among the Selkirk Glaciers', in 1890 and was the first book written about the Canadian mountains and his description of the 'perfect alpine paradise' led many European climbers to head for the Canadian west which resulted in a burgeoning climbing fraternity in that country.

He is credited with recommending the location for a small chalet to the Canadian Pacific Railway that would grow to become the Chateau Lake Louise hotel.

Another aspect of his life was that he made a notable contribution to the Irish sea-fishing industry.

For on overview of his life see here (DIB)

Detailed accounts of his mountaineering in:

In Search of Peaks, Passes and Glaciers,  Frank Nugent (The Collins Press); and

William Spotswood Green, Paddy Leahy, Vol 4, IMEHS Journal of Mountaineering Ireland

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The Golden Age of Alpinism - Ireland's contribution

 In Search of PEAKS, PASSES & GLACIERS is Frank Nugent's account of the Irish Alpine Pioneers who made a significant contribution to Alpinism during its Golden Age and the following fifty years.

The Golden Age of Alpinism is generally agreed to have begun with Alfred Wills' ascent of the Wetterhorn in 1854 that was the beginning of a sustained period of mountain climbing in the Alps that made fashionable the idea of mountaineering as a sporting activity.  Something of an austere figure, Wills was a judge of the High Court of England and Wales; an Irish connection was that it was he who passed judgement on Oscar Wilde.

John Ball

One of Wills' close friends and climbing companions was John Ball and he  '...was a man whose work in the Alps may...be characterised as that of the chief pioneer of mountain exploration, whether in its scientific, its practical or its literary aspects'. (WAB Coolidge, Ball's Obit.)

Some background:

John Ball, born in Dublin on 20 Aug 1818, a Roman Catholic, he was descended from a Cromwellian officer (Jonathan Ball) and was the son of Nicholas Ball, a barrister, a supporter of Catholic Emancipation and Daniel O'Connell, MP for Clonmel and a judge of the Court of Common Pleas. Nicholas's eldest sister Cecilia Ball (1784–1854) was superior of the Ursuline convent in Cork; his second sister Anna Maria Ball was a noted philanthropist; and his youngest sister Mary Teresa (Frances) Ball  introduced the Loreto order to Ireland. (D I B).

A precocious youngster, his first view of the Alps was at age nine and he was smitten.  His education took him to he Jesuit college at Oscott and later to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he studied under a number of eminent scientists (Airy, Henslow, Sedgwick) but his religion prevented him taking a degree.

Peaks, Passes & Glaciers

Details of his Alpine career are recorded in many places. He visited the Alps almost every year from the mid 1840s until his death.  He made the first ascent of  Monte Pelmo.  He crossed the main Alpine chain 48 times by 32 different passes, and another 100 passes on lateral ridges.

He was chosen as first president of the Alpine Club, instituted and edited its annual Peaks, Passes and Glaciers in 1859, the forerunner of the Alpine Journal; Ball's Alpine Guides,  published in three volumes ((1863-8), became, famously,  his most influential work.

During the 'Great Famine' in Ireland he was appointed an assistant poor law commissioner (1846–7), an experience that led him to write a tract, What is to be done for Ireland? (1847). His health broke down from overwork and he resigned, but returned as second commissioner (1849–51).   An unsuccessful parliamentary candidate for Sligo borough in July 1848, he was elected liberal MP for Carlow county (1852–7), advocating church disestablishment and land reform...appointed .. under-secretary for the colonies (1855–7). He used the position to promote his scientific interests, notably the Palliser Expedition (1857) which discovered several possible rail routes across Canada.  After failing to be elected for Sligo county in April 1857, he stood for Limerick city at a by-election in February 1858, ... he was narrowly defeated... disillusioned him with politics .... to devote himself to science and travel, usually spending part of his summers in Ireland (he had a house at 85 St Stephen's Green, Dublin) and his winters in Europe or North Africa.

As Poor Law Commissioner he had an opportunity to visit many parts of this country to do some hiking. It was in about 1846, when he was visiting the Dingle Peninsula, that he noted features that were attributable to the action of glaciers.  Two years later he had an opportunity to examine the area more closely and reported signs of glaciation around Lough Doon, near Connor Pass, and that he walked along the moraine that extends down to the lower Lough Beirne.  He discussed the glacial features around Lough Cruite under Brandon Peak and the former existence of a small glacier on the NE side of Purple Mountain, where its moraine '...offers to the pedestrian the only path wherein his foot does not sink in the spongy masses of sphagnum...'  All this about ten years before the formation of the Alpine Club  [(See Journal of the Geological Society of Ireland IV for his report (1848-50)] and this shows that he undertook some mountain activities in his own country.

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Others to follow.:

John Tyndall

Anthony Adams Reilly