YOUTH AND EARLY TRAVELS 63 



cence remained for a century unsullied by any crowd of admirers. 

 Chamonix was thought of at Geneva, as far as it was thought of at 

 all, as a forbidding district inhabited by a peasantry of a more or 

 less uncouth, if not dangerous, disposition, who made a precarious 

 living by selling crystals, 1 butter, and honey, and telling strange 

 tales of the 'frosty fairyland' which encompassed their home. 

 The good citizens of Geneva no more looked on the glaciers of 

 Savoy as an object for a holiday than the Russian officials at 

 Kutais fifty years ago thought of pleasure -touring in Suanetia 

 under the shadow of Tetnuld and Ushba. 



The dwellers in the vale of Chamonix had been discovered to 

 their cost by clerics and clerks. But, with few exceptions, 2 their 

 visitors before 1760 had been bound on business ; they had not 

 gone beyond the chief village, or paid any particular attention to 

 the strange features of the scenery. It was left to a party of our 

 countrymen, most of them youths completing their education at 

 Geneva, to furnish the world with the first detailed account of ' a 

 visit to the Ice-Alps of Savoy.' The leaders of the expedition of 

 eight Englishmen, which penetrated as far as the Montenvers, were 

 Pococke, a well-known Eastern traveller, and Mr. Windham of 

 Felbrigg. These adventurers were destined to be the forerunners of 

 the host of ' visitors to the glaciers,' who a few years later disturbed 

 Gibbon in his retreat at Lausanne. 3 In 1741 they were the first to 

 reveal not only to the literary and scientific world of Europe, but 

 also to the citizens of Geneva, that the glaciers of Grindelwald, 

 already brought into notice by the scientists of Berne and the 

 worthy Scheuchzer as 'miracles of nature,' had their rivals in Savoy. 

 Windham's narrative has of late been often reprinted, condensed, 

 and commented on, and need not be dealt with here in any detail. 3 

 But it is due to our countrymen to point out that their story has 

 been unfairly criticised. Their claim to be discoverers has been 



1 Crystals are mentioned by Evelyn as one of the chief articles of commerce 

 at Geneva. 



* Amongst the exceptions before 1740 may be reckoned Fatio de Duillier, 

 a Prince of Sulzbach in 1727, and soon after 1740 Firmin Abauzit. 



8 Archdeacon Coxe, in his Life of Benjamin Stillingfleet, mentions that Pococke 

 and Windham were joint authors of the latter's letter, but were aided in its composi- 

 tion by the latter's tutor, Stillingfleet. The title of the rare tract is 'An Account 

 of the Glaciers or Ice Alps of Savoy in two letters, one from an English gentleman 

 to his friend at Geneva, the other from Peter Martel, engineer, to the said 

 English gentleman,' 1744. 



