170 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



From Grindelwald de Saussure crossed the Great Scheideck and 

 took the now familiar route over the Grimsel and the Gries to the 

 Italian Lakes. After calling on the celebrated electrical inventor 

 Volta at Como, he crossed the Spliigen and travelled by the Via 

 Mala, Chur, and Wallenstadt to Zurich and Berne, where he paid 

 a visit to Haller, whose health was fast failing. For the latter 

 part of the tour the journal is little more than a skeleton and 

 contains nothing of interest. 



While the first volume of the Voyages was going through the 

 press in 1779, de Saussure received from Berne an offer for its 

 translation into German from a man who during most of his life 

 had been the pastor of one of the churches in that city. Jakob 

 Samuel Wyttenbach had been associated with Haller in his 

 publications on the Bernese Oberland, and had already translated 

 and commented on portions of Deluc's Travels. After Haller's 

 death, Wyttenbach, if he had no claim to the European repu- 

 tation of his predecessor, took his place to a great extent as a 

 source of information for the many travellers who were now 

 turning their minds to the Alps, and as a link between the 

 various observers who were working in various parts of Switzer- 

 land to promote a better knowledge of the mountains and 

 their phenomena. 1 Large extracts from his voluminous cor- 

 respondence have been published by Dr. Diibi, who has shown 

 that Wyttenbach was the channel through which Baron de Gers- 

 dorf, the eye-witness of the first ascent of Mont Blanc, mainly 

 carried on his communications with Chamonix and Geneva. 



De Saussure, while protesting that Wyttenbach would employ 

 his time to better purpose in composing an original work on the 

 mountains, gratefully accepted the offer of so competent a trans- 

 lator, and the first two volumes of the Voyages appeared in four 

 in German, published at Leipzig in 1781 and 1786. It appears, 

 however, that Wyttenbach in the end acted rather as the super- 

 visor than the actual translator, 2 who was probably a lady geologist, 

 a Mile. Miiller, who is mentioned in the correspondence of the time. 



It is interesting among Wyttenbach's letters to find several 



1 In 1776 he supplied the text accompanying Wagner's views in the Bernese 

 Oberland. In 1787 he published a small volume entitled, Instruction pour Us 

 Voyageurs qui vont voir les Olaciers et Us Alpes du Canton de Berne. 



2 See de Saussure to Wyttenbach, 9th November 1781. Diibi's Jakob Samuel 

 Wyttenbach und seine Freunde (Berne, 1910). 



