160 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



served as his guide eight years previously. The poor man, he 

 tells us, had gone out with his children to collect wild hay, and had 

 told them to start home with their burden and that he would 

 soon follow. He failed to do so, and when sought for was found 

 lying dead with his hands crossed on his chest as if in peaceable 

 sleep. De Saussure comments : 



' A hard-working and good life ending in so gentle a death, in an 

 attitude which seemed to indicate that, feeling his powers failing, he 

 had addressed to Heaven his last looks and his last thoughts, had 

 inspired in the village a kind of reverence for his memory.' [ Voyages, 

 1806.] 



De Saussure made it his first business on reaching Airolo 

 to climb to a height on the southern side of Val Leventina 

 whence he would get a general view of the peaks round the St. 

 Gotthard Pass. He recognised at once that there was no peak 

 rivalling Mont Blanc or the Oberland summits, and correctly 

 estimated that the ' Gletscherberg,' north of the Furka (pro- 

 bably the Galenstock), the loftiest, did not reach 12,000 feet. 

 This disco very, de Saussure says, 'somewhat diminished his respect 

 for the St. Gotthard.' 



Some letters written to his wife in 1777 and 1783 give a lively 

 picture of travel at that date : 



' The situation of Airolo,' de Saussure writes, ' is unique for a 

 naturalist, surrounded by very high mountains, almost all accessible 

 through a smiling valley inhabited by a friendly population which 

 understands rocks, and provided with a very good inn, managed by 

 zealous and polite hosts, excellent air, good water, and delicious 

 salmon trout. 



' I am very pleased with Joseph (his servant) ; he has charming 

 manners and is very attentive. He does not love and climb rocks 

 as well as I do, but it is unreasonable to ask this of a man not born in 

 the Alps ; still he is much better in these respects than Charles [his 

 predecessor]. He looks so well in his blue uniform, which we told 

 him to wear on the journey, that yesterday, when I was dining with 

 an Italian shopkeeper, and Joseph at another table at the bottom of 

 the room, the shopkeeper thought he was an officer who was too 

 proud to dine with us, and formed a great respect for me when he 

 learnt he was my servant.' 



The Capuchins of the St. Gotthard Hospice de Saussure found 

 hospitable enough, though men of a far less intelligent type than 



