104 Historical 



the distress caused by walking reached its highest point after the 

 first eight or ten seconds of the halt. 



During the last quarter hour of the ascent, the slope was gentler 

 and the wind blew less violently. These two causes, added to the joy 

 I felt when I saw the summit only a short distance away, lessened 

 my distress greatly. M. Bravais suffered only from the cold. We had 

 already realized that of the three of us it was he who felt the effects 

 of the rarified air least. M. Martins was the one who suffered most 

 from it. He was very much out of breath, had palpitations, throbbing 

 in the carotids, and a little headache; he felt a general fatigue, and 

 took fewer steps than we did. When he reached the summit, he 

 thought he was still a half hour away from it, and felt keen joy when 

 he found he was there. None of us felt pain or fatigue or anything 

 extraordinary in the coxofemoral articulation while we were walking; 

 in general, we felt no fatigue in the muscles of the thigh. MM. 

 Bravais and Martins had a little in the right anterior muscle only. 



Between the Rochei's Rouges (4,500 meters) and the Petits- 

 Mulets (4,660 meters), we first took eighty steps without stopping 

 for breath, then this number was lessened to seventy, and finally to 

 thirty-five or forty steps between the PetTts-Mulets and the summit. 

 However, as we came near the highest point, since the grade was very 

 moderate, we made one or two stretches longer than the others. At 

 about forty meters from the summit, M. Bravais wanted to see how 

 many steps he could take climbing as quickly as possible and in the 

 direction of the great slope. He had to stop after thirty-two steps; 

 he felt, he said, that when he stopped, he could have taken two or 

 three more, perhaps four, but that it would have been quite impos- 

 sible for him to go beyond that. 



During the ascent, none of the guides or porters seemed affected; 

 two of them were a little more fatigued than the others; they were 

 Frasserand, who the day before had been rather fatigued when we 

 reached the Grand-Plateau, and A. Couttet, who had been ill there 

 all afternoon. Our two guides and the porter Simon seemed able to 

 take more steps than we were. Several times they stopped only 

 because they were asked to. M. Bravais and I reached the summit at 

 the same time; M. Martins joined us there a few minutes afterwards . . 



For eight or ten minutes I had keen pain in my feet, caused by 

 the change from intense cold to warmth. I was also rather drowsy 

 shortly after we arrived and when the pain in my feet had stopped. 

 I lay down on the snow where I remained five minutes, but without 

 being able to sleep. Then I got up, the desire for sleep disappeared, 

 and during the whole time we spent on the summit I felt absolutely 

 no painful sensation, except a little cold the last hour. I had no 

 appetite, although the idea of eating caused me no disgust. M. 

 Bravais was also very well; only from time to time he felt the slight 

 nausea which M. Martins and I had observed in ourselves the day 

 before on the Grand-Plateau. He had an appetite and ate some 

 biscuits and a few prunes. Shortly after our arrival at the summit, 

 he and I each drank about a third of a glass of brandy. This liquor 

 seemed to us delicious and very mild, to our great surprise; it did us 

 much good, and gave us strength without causing the excitation 



