YOUTH AND EARLY TRAVELS 89 



was a vast reservoir, with plateaux and valleys filled with snow- 

 fields which gave birth, both towards Savoy and Italy, to glaciers 

 of every size and dimension. Above and around the snows towered 

 apparently inaccessible granite peaks, split and torn by weather, 

 from which blocks were continually falling. 



From the point of view of botany de Saussure once more ex- 

 presses his disappointment with Chamonix. 



' The flora of the district,' he writes, ' is intolerably monotonous. 

 I do not know whether it is the exposure, or the soil, or the neigh- 

 bourhood of the glaciers, but it is always the same thing, and often 

 nothing but bare rocks.' 



He does not seem to have explored on this or on any of his later 

 tours the sunward slopes under the Aiguille de Varens, where the 

 flora, favoured by a limestone soil, is of exceptional beauty. 



We note that the visitors to Savoy of the eighteenth century 

 realised that the base of a great mountain is not the best point from 

 which to appreciate its proportions. The aspects of Mont Blanc 

 they most frequently admired and represented were those from the 

 neighbourhood of Sallanches, which the modern tourist hurries 

 past in a train. In this respect they showed more discrimination 

 than their successors. But the spots from which the most perfect 

 views of Mont Blanc may be gained have up to this day remained 

 unknown and un visited. From the alps above Passy and Servoz 

 the great mountain is seen from top to base framed in the ravine 

 of the Arve. Here nature has risen to the occasion by providing 

 that rarity in the Alps, an exquisitely wooded foreground for a 

 great snow mountain. Above the vineyards of Passy terraced 

 lawns, smooth enough to serve as cricket-grounds, are watered 

 by clear sparkling brooks and encircled by mossy groves of 

 beech and ash. Higher still in the heart of this wilderness, and 

 approached by tracks known to few, a solitary pool hides among 

 the pinewoods and reflects in its still waters the crowning snows 

 of Mont Blanc, completing a picture worthy of a great painter or 

 poet. May it be long before these ' sedes discretae piorum ' are 

 invaded by the polluting multitude ! 



De Saussure now set out on his first tour of Mont Blanc. He 

 dwells on the desolation and danger in bad weather of the Bon- 

 homme, where one of his mules executed several somersaults on 



