162 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



and his chief title to fame is having been the protector and 

 educator of the famous lady who became his aunt. De Saussure 

 found him 



1 ready to talk rocks : at first I was afraid he wanted to get the benefit 

 of my observations, but I found with a pleasure which was perhaps 

 ignoble that he was not a serious student and did not attempt to 

 generalise. He was on the look-out for curious specimens for his 

 collection, without any consideration for grouping them. I recog- 

 nised that he was in no sense a formidable rival.' 



On a second visit to the St. Gotthard, de Saussure climbed 

 the Prosa (8983 feet), a peak east of the Hospice. It was fairly 

 steep and regarded by the Capuchins as inaccessible. He found 

 a dead cow at its foot, and remarks that, though this animal is 

 not * a symbol of agility, there are few naturalists of the plain 

 who would care to follow wherever an Alpine cow led.' For him- 

 self, on this occasion he found no difficulty. 



From Andermatt de Saussure visited the lake on the Oberalp 

 Pass, one of the sources of the Vorder Rhein. The fishery of the 

 lake was let to the hotel-keeper at Andermatt for 900 francs 

 for ten years. 



The descent to Altdorf interested de Saussure deeply as a 

 geologist. He found on the St. Gotthard far better opportunities 

 of studying the features of granitic rocks than even in the chain 

 of Mont Blanc. He satisfied himself that they were stratified, 

 and that the strata were in many instances vertical. He came 

 to the conclusion that the cause of the dislocation and contortion 

 of the rocks was not internal explosions, but compression. He 

 records his conviction that his observations would be verified 

 even where they were controverted by ' Buffon and other con- 

 structors of systems.' In another branch of his work he was 

 less satisfied. Writing to his wife, he regrets that he does not yet 

 get on well with his attempts at sketching : 



' It is a terrible task,' he says, ' to draw a mountain in its detail, 

 to make it all come out clearly, so that the beds and the joints do not 

 look flat that it does not resemble a split board. Oh, this is really 

 difficult ! Still, I struggle on, and by degrees I shall end by making 

 intelligible sketches of the St. Gotthard, which is the most important 

 point. For you, my good angel, you always have the same success in 

 making your little ladies who fan themselves at the foot of a tree 



