2 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



and sought knowledge and inspiration from direct contact with 

 nature and with one another. Most of the leaders of that 

 generation have long since been commemorated by competent 

 writers. But of one of them, the subject of this volume, no 

 adequate Life has hitherto appeared. The lack points to a strange 

 remissness on the part of his fellow-citizens, for de Saussure 

 is the greatest man of science Geneva can boast, and material 

 was not lacking in the Public Library and private cabinets of 

 the town. 



De Saussure has two principal claims to our grateful remem- 

 brance. He took a leading part in raising Geology to its high place 

 among the physical sciences ; it is mainly to him we owe that 

 we can count Alpine travel among the pleasures and consolations 

 of life. These surely are services that called for an attempt to 

 furnish some record of a career that has added largely to human 

 knowledge and still more to human happiness. Yet in the words 

 of his distinguished fellow-citizen, Professor Borgeaud, ' Horace 

 Benedict de Saussure still awaits his biographer.' 



To the general reader of to-day de Saussure is known, if known 

 at all, as the conqueror of Mont Blanc. But even from this aspect 

 the part he played in creating the modern taste for Alpine scenery 

 and travel has been but imperfectly appreciated. It may help 

 my readers to realise the change in the attitude of men towards 

 mountains effected by the lad who, at the age of twenty, walked 

 to Chamonix and offered a reward to the first climber of Mont Blanc, 

 if, before telling the story of his life, I ask them to cast a glance 

 backwards, and in so doing to pay a brief tribute to certain of the 

 rare spirits who in earlier centuries found health and happiness 

 on the heights. I shall dwell more particularly on the age 

 immediately preceding de Saussure 's own, the period before his 

 personal influence had begun to make itself felt, the first sixty years 

 of the eighteenth century, in which the outstanding figures are 

 Rousseau and Voltaire in the Suisse Romande and Haller in 

 German Switzerland. 



In the consciousness of simple peoples all waste places, whether 

 seas, deserts, or mountains, are apt to be objects of religious awe ; 

 they are regarded as portals to the unseen world. To the part 

 played by mountains in the legendary dealings of Jehovah with 

 his chosen people, the books of the Old Testament bear frequent 



