Biographical Memoir of' Horace Benedict de Saussure. S33 



inhabitants of Chamouny, by following the most direct route, 

 which various prejudices had hitherto made him shua, had re- 

 tiirned the previous day from that summit which mortal foot 

 had never before trodden. His eagerness to follow their steps 

 may be easily imagined, when, on the 19th August, he was at 

 Chamouny ; but the rains and snows prevented him from ascend- 

 ing that year. It was not till the 21st July 1788 that he at 

 kngth accomplished this great object of his wishes. 



Accompanied by a servant and eighteen guides, whom he 

 encouraged by his promises and example, after having ascend- 

 ed for two days, and lain two nights in the midst of the snows, 

 • — after having viewed horrible chasms under his feet, and 

 heard two tremendous avalanches roll by his side, he arrived at 

 the summit about the middle of the third day. His eyes, he 

 says, were first turned towards Chamouny, where his family 

 were watching his progress with a telescope, and where he had 

 the pleasure to see a flag waving in the air, the appointed signal to 

 assure him that his arrival had been perceived, and that their pain- 

 ful solicitude respecting his fate was at least suspended. He then 

 calmly set about performing his intended experiments, and con- 

 tinued for several hours at this employment, although, at the 

 height he now stood (15,000 French feet), the rarity of the air ac- 

 celerated the pulse like a burning fever, and overwhelmed them 

 with fatigue at the slightest motion, while, in those frozen re- 

 gions, a cruel thirst parched their lips, as if among the sands of 

 Africa ; and the snow, by reflecting the light, dazzled the sight, 

 and scorched the face. The inconveniences of the poles and 

 tropics were alike experienced ; and Saussure, in a journey of 

 a few miles, braved as many hardships and dangers, as if he had 

 gone round the world. 



His last expedition, and one of the most interesting with re- 

 gard to the theory of the earth, was that to Mount Rosa in the 

 Pennine Alps, which he performed in 1789. Instead of those 

 needles of granite, which commonly pierce their envelopes, to 

 form the ridge of the high Alps, he there observed an enor- 

 mous plateau, where the granite, which every where else ap- 

 peared uncovered, was enveloped under a mass of slate and 

 limestone, disposed, along with the granite, in horizontal strata. 

 From this appearance the views of Saussure, regarding the for- 

 mation of granite in a fluid, and the succession of the other pri^ 



