The following Easter he was again among the Lake Mountains, having devoted the Whitsuntide and Christmas holidays of the preceding year to his favourite pursuit, the last mentioned period being spent in North Wales. I hurry over his climbing in the Lake District for the very sufficient reason that in this volume, so characteristic of its author, his work there is described by himself with all the accuracy of a trained scientist, and with all the enthusiasm of an ardent mountaineer. Descriptions of all these climbs were kept by him in numerous small notebooks, full of neat shorthand with dates, proper names, &c., written in, and with occasional pen and ink sketches of his routes up crags and gullies to illustrate the shorthand notes. Full of mournful interest are these touches of a vanished hand, these silent echoes of a voice that is still.
It was, I believe, during this Easter of 1891 that he met Mr. Monro, to whose enthusiasm he was subsequently wont to attribute his first visit to the Alps, which took place in the autumn of that year. The result of that meeting and the wonderful amount of climbing in ‘the playground of Europe’ that Jones managed to cram into eight short years must be reserved for another chapter.
In the autumn of 1891 Owen Jones was an unsuccessful candidate for the Professorship of Physics at University College, Aberystwyth, and almost immediately afterwards he was the successful candidate for the post of Physics Master in the City of London School, which he was occupying at the time of his death. In the previous year, 1890, he had taken his B.Sc. degree in London University, coming out third in the list of First Class Honours in Experimental Physics. These facts are mentioned here now, somewhat out of their proper chronological order, because, with the exception of a few papers he contributed to magazines (the _Alpine Journal_, the _Climber’s Journal_, and _Cassell’s Magazine_) and sundry newspaper articles, they are the only facts that need be mentioned in his otherwise uneventful, though busy, life.
Jones’ real life was lived among his beloved mountains. His devotion to them was unsurpassable, his zeal was consuming, his enthusiasm knew no bounds. In the summer holidays of 1891 he had his first introduction to the Alps. His most original work was undoubtedly done among the rocks of his native Wales and in the English Lake country, but he flung himself into Alpine work with all the ardour and energy of which his peculiarly ardent and energetic nature was capable. He spared neither time, money, nor comfort in his devotion to the noblest and most exacting of all sports--that of mountaineering.