TEN YEARS' ALPINE TRAVEL (1774-84) 153 



and a warm tribute to their arduous and self-sacrificing lives a 

 tribute which, coming from a Protestant source, no doubt had 

 double weight. It seems to have been at least partly called forth 

 by libellous attacks calculated to interfere with the monks in 

 obtaining the subscriptions on which they in great part depended, 

 since many of the legacies left them by pious donors in return for 

 service rendered had lapsed after the Reformation . Amongst these 

 were lands in diverse countries, including some in England. It 

 is worth note that de Saussure bears explicit witness to the great 

 service rendered by the famous dogs in tracking and discovering 

 travellers lost in the snow, which has been treated as more or 

 less apocryphal by some recent writers. 



De Saussure found the Hospice an excellent centre for ex- 

 cursions, and in 1774 climbed the Chenalette and several other 

 panoramic points of about 9000 feet in height in the range between 

 it and the Val Ferret. 1 He also visited, both in 1767 and 1778, the 

 Valsorey Glacier, which lies at the north-east foot of Mont Velan, 

 and is familiar to modern mountaineers who make use of the 

 so-called high-level route from Chamonix to Zermatt. A basin 

 contained by two of its tributaries was formerly filled by a lake 

 known as the Gouille a Vassu, the waters of which periodically 

 broke loose and caused inundations in the lower valley. 



De Saussure suggests that these outbreaks were due to the 

 subglacial streams which drained the lake becoming frozen in 

 winter and their channels blocked, so that the meltings of the 

 upper slopes accumulated in spring in the basin until a fresh issue 

 was suddenly forced. 



It must have been on one of the tours summarised in this 

 Voyage that de Saussure stayed with another clerical friend. 

 J. M. Clement, the Vicaire of Val d'Hliez, who was, in 1784, the 

 first to climb the Dent du Midi. The worthy Vicaire was not 

 only a mountaineer, but a naturalist and book-collector, and the 

 walls of his guest-chamber were lined with some eight hundred 

 volumes. When during de Saussure 's visit a shelf collapsed on 

 his bed, his host excused himself on the ground that since it was 

 the weight of the copy of the Voyages, which de Saussure had 



1 During these excursions he observed, and was at a loss to account for, a 

 sheet of highly polished rock marked with striations, mentioned also in King's 

 Italian Valleys of the Alps. He also noted the occurrence of veins of limestone 

 cutting at a right angle the strata of quartz. 



