96 SPARKS FROM A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMER. 



strength and my will. All which surrounded me seemed 

 to be mine." 



He turned toward Chamonix and waved his hat in the 

 air. All the village had assembled to witness a human 

 beincr on the summit of that white and eternallv solitarv 

 dome. All the village! They had confided their secret 

 only to three women! 



We leave Balmat to get himself and his half-dead doc- 

 tor back to Chamonix as best he may. The doctor was 

 blind, and Balmat was equally so on the following day. 

 At the end of four days he went to Geneva to notify De 

 Saussure of his success; but he tells us curtl}^, " The En- 

 glish had got the start of me.'' Brave Balmat! "Bal- 

 mat of Mont Blanc," as the King of Sardinia titled him. 

 He sleeps at length in a crevasse. Fifty years afterward, 

 at the age of 72, he fell from a shelf of rock into the 

 depths of a fissure, from which his body was never recov- 

 ered, a grandiose and fitting sepulcher for the first in- 

 vader of the drear solitudes of Alpine snows and ice. " The 

 ancients would have imagined that this conqueror of the 

 mountains had disappeared in an apotheosis." 



Balmat's success was in 1786. De Saussure was unable 

 to effect his long-desired ascent till 1787. Six days later 

 he was followed by an Englishman, Col. Bagle}^ The only 

 ascent in 1788 was by another Englishman, Mr. Woldlej'. 

 No more ascensions occurred till 1802. From that vear 

 to 1853 there were, in all, but 63 ascensions. In 1860 

 there was but one reported, though in 1861 there were 39. 



In 1869 we have a record of 54: in 1870. the vear 

 of the Franco-German war, 14. The maximum number 

 has been 58, in 1873. In 1874 there were 41. 



