TEN YEARS' ALPINE TRAVEL (1774-84) 149 



inconveniencing me greatly. This man, who doubtless believed that 

 I only went on foot because I could not afford to ride, answered me 

 with a really comic air of dignity. I ought, he said, " to bear the 

 discomfort patiently, since it was quite right that those on foot should 

 suffer something at the hands of those who were on horseback.' ' Never- 

 theless, he let me pass, no doubt to make me feel doubly his superiority.' 

 [Voyage*, 884.] 



From Courmayeur de Saussure in 1778 made his second ascent 

 of the Crammont. He writes : 



' I felt an inexpressible satisfaction in finding myself on this 

 magnificent belvedere, which had given me so much pleasure four years 

 earlier. The air was perfectly clear, the sun threw a great flood of 

 light on Mont Blanc and all its chain ; no vestige of cloud or vapour 

 robbed us of the view of the objects we had come to gaze on, and 

 the certainty of enjoying for several hours this great spectacle gave 

 the mind an assurance which doubled the feeling of enjoyment. My 

 first object was to revise and complete the notes I had taken in 1774, 

 but I soon found this work distasteful ; it seemed to me that it was 

 an insult to the sublimity of the scene to compare it to anything but 

 itself. I began accordingly my observations afresh. . . .' 



' It is a law general to all the primitive mountains that the secondary 

 chains which flank them on either side have their strata tilted towards 

 the central range. ... I saw the primitive chain composed of layers 

 which may be regarded as strata ; these strata are vertical in the central 

 range, while those of the secondary ridges, almost vertical where they 

 abut on the former, become less inclined as they are more distant, and 

 as they recede farther and farther approach gradually to the horizontal. 



' I thus recognised that the relations between the primitive and 

 the secondary mountains which I had already noticed in the sub- 

 stances of which they consist extend also to the form and position 

 of their strata, since all the secondary summits in view culminated 

 in pyramidal blades with sharp edges like Mont Blanc and the primitive 

 mountains. I concluded from these characteristics that since the 

 secondary mountains had been formed in the bosom of the waters, the 

 primitive must have had the same origin. Retracing in my brain 

 the succession of the great revolutions which our globe has undergone, 

 I saw the sea, covering the whole surface of the globe, form by succes- 

 sive deposits and crystallisations first the primitive mountains, then 

 the secondary. I saw these deposits arrange themselves symmetrically 

 in concentric beds, and subsequently the fire or other elastic fluids 

 contained in the interior of the globe lift and break up this crust and 



