16 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



William Burnet, sent to Sir Hans Sloane, the President of the 

 Royal Society, a further description of the Grindelwald Glaciers, 

 and even made an attempt to propound a glacier theory. 



Scheuchzer had described his travels both in fluent Latin 

 and in German. His successor, Gottlieb Sigmund Griiner, wrote 

 only in German, in itself a significant fact. Unlike Scheuchzer, 

 he was more of a compiler than a traveller. One of his contem- 

 poraries calls him a ' chamber philosopher,' and de Saussure 

 mentions that his bad health and ' certain physical defects ' 

 compelled him to rely mainly on the reports of others. He 

 employed a number of local correspondents, on whom he depended 

 for his matter and his illustrations ; as to the latter, the artists 

 appear to have been far from conscientious. 



Griiner was a practical book-maker and he wrote to meet a 

 need which he was the first to recognise. There was, he saw, a 

 public eager to read about the mountains and their natural 

 wonders ; a demand which the many editions of the old ' D61ices 

 de la Suisse ' of the first half of the eighteenth century (1714 and 

 later), dealing mainly with the towns and humanity, had failed to 

 satisfy. 1 His own countrymen, and the foreign Milords and Barons 

 who were now making pilgrimage to the Glaciers of Grindelwald and 

 Chamonix, wanted something better. These visitors were yearly 

 growing more numerous. The inn which the pastor had started 

 at Grindelwald was a profitable concern, and as early as 1748 its 

 goodwill had been transferred to a peasant landlord. The Due 

 de la Rochefoucauld had in 1762 followed Pococke and Windham 

 to Chamonix. The ' Glaciers de Faucigny ' could hardly be left 

 out, though the only picture of them procurable was certainly 

 not according to nature, and had subsequently to be apologised 

 for. Griiner, in writing to Wyttenbach, attributes it to Nicolas 

 Fatio, who must therefore be reckoned among the early visitors 

 to Chamonix. 



Griiner sets forth his purpose in a modest preface to the first 

 edition of his work. He begins by asking those who know the 



1 It ia true that the author of an edition of 1730 is at pains to argue that, 

 despite obvious objections, mountains as affording pasturage, game, mines, 

 good frontiers, and ' a thousand natural rarities and curiosities,' may claim to 

 be counted among the attractions of his country. But he proceeds to give 

 thirty-two pages to dragons and only a passing reference to glaciers, with a plate 

 of the Lower Grindelwald Glacier. 



