152 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



sojourn at Liddes (1778-91) was marked by a succession of law- 

 suits. It was apparently the custom for the Cur6 to conduct 

 two processions a week between Easter and Midsummer in return 

 for which he was entitled to receive a cheese from each family 

 of his parishioners. A number having refused their offering, 

 Murith appealed to the law, obtained a judgment in his favour, 

 and proceeded, perhaps rashly, to read it out from the pulpit. 

 The aggrieved parish took its defeat ill, followed their pastor 

 to his home, and turned him out, ' without giving him time to get 

 his dinner, or even his hat.' Ten days later he was reinstated 

 by the ' Baron de Preux, Governor, and the Banneret Barberini 

 of the Dixaine of Sion.' But ecclesiastical discipline having 

 been thus vindicated, the energetic Cure was judiciously promoted 

 to the Priory of Martigny. 



In 1779 Murith, then thirty-seven, succeeded in climbing the 

 Velan. No account of his expedition, except a travestied report 

 by Bourrit, was to hand until Mr. Montagnier lighted on the 

 following letter addressed to de Saussure : 



' 5th Sept. 1779. 



' MONSIEUR, After great labours, difficulties, and fatigues, I have 

 at last succeeded in transporting myself, with thermometer, barometer, 

 and a compass with level, to the summit of Mont Velan by a terrible 

 climb. 



' Why did I not have you at my side ? You would have enjoyed 

 on the 31st August the finest sight it is possible for an amateur of 

 mountains and glaciers to imagine. You would even have been in a 

 position to compare in a vast circle all the mountains and their different 

 heights, from Turin to the Little St. Bernard, from Mont Blanc to the 

 Lake of Geneva, from Vevey to the St. Gotthard, from the St. Gotthard 

 to Turin in a word, what would you not have seen ? But I dare not 

 promise to give you the enjoyment of this ravishing spectacle. I had 

 too much difficulty, despite my hardihood, myself to gain this icy 

 colossus. . . .' 



In 1781 de Saussure was taken by Murith to the Otemma 

 Glacier in Val de Bagnes. His manuscript journal contains a 

 careful notice, the first on record, of the veined structure of the 

 ice, which is nowhere referred to in the Voyages. 



In treating of the St. Bernard, de Saussure breaks his usual 

 practice in order to give a historical sketch of the monastery ; 

 to this he adds an account of the rescue work done by the monks 



