54 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



the Saleve, the Voirons, and the heights of the Jura. On these 

 excursions he was wont to collect for his mother, who loved and 

 studied flowers, specimens of all the species of the mountain flora 

 that came in his way. Already he had been bitten with the 

 mountain passion. In the ' Discours Preliminaire ' which intro- 

 duces his Voyages, an autobiographical document of great interest, 

 he recalls these early rambles r 1 



* I have had from childhood the most positive passion for the 

 pleasures of the mountains. I still remember the sensation I felt 

 when, for the first time, my hands touched the rocks of the Saleve 

 and my eyes enjoyed its points of view.' 



As a rule, he tells us, he preferred solitary walks, since they 

 left him more free to use his eyes. But he found com- 

 panions for many of his youthful rambles in his contemporaries, 

 Jean Louis Pictet (not to be confused with Marc Auguste Pictet, 

 afterwards his great friend and successor in his professorship) 

 and Fran9ois Jalabert, the son of a well-known scientist. The 

 former was an astronomer who visited Siberia in 1768 to observe 

 the transit of Venus, while the latter was something of an artist. 

 Both at a later date joined de Saussure in some of his more 

 extensive Alpine expeditions. 



These early excursions furnished many picturesque incidents 

 which are pleasantly interspersed in the first volume of the 

 Voyages. Here is a description of the deserted convent on Les 

 Voirons (4856 feet) and its former inmates : 



' A Madonna held in repute in the neighbourhood is the object 

 of their worship and the motive of their sojourn in so wild and cold a 

 locality. I saw one of these martyrs of superstition, a victim of 

 rheumatism and subject to frightful torments. Heaven, weary of 

 their sufferings, allowed their wretched dwellings to be burnt ; they 

 had the courage to pass one or two years in a vault the flames had 

 spared, but at last gained permission to seek a milder climate, and the 

 Madonna was transferred to Annecy. I always remember with a 

 shudder the dark court which occupied the centre of the Convent 

 it was a real ice-cave, filled with melting snow, and formed in the 

 middle of the building a reservoir of cold and damp that became 

 more dangerous as the outer air grew hotter.' [Voyages, 275.] 



1 See pp. 286-91. 



