THE BUET 177 



In 1762 Deluc had submit ted in manuscript to the Paris Academy 

 his Recherches sur les Modifications de I' Atmosphere, ou Theorie des 

 Barometres et des Thermometres (published ten years later), a work 

 which served to establish a method of ascertaining the heights of 

 mountains by barometrical observations, and was recognised at 

 the time as one of the best treatises on the use of instruments in 

 meteorology. Its author claimed more for the Letters ; he 

 asserted in the preface that they supplied the outline of a treatise 

 on nature and man's place in it. The text depicts the scenery 

 of the Lake of Geneva and the Bernese Oberland ; the descriptions 

 are interspersed with many reflections on the advantages of a 

 pastoral life and the virtue of Swiss peasants, obviously derived 

 for the most part from Rousseau. 



If Deluc claims our respect as a scientific worker and an Alpine 

 traveller, he does his best in his writings to make us forget it by 

 his attitude as a universal philosopher and a courtier. The 

 modern reader is amused rather than instructed or edified by 

 his books, particularly when the author is led by ' the ecstasies 

 in which he often finds himself on the mountains ' into a long 

 assault on materialism, and then apologises in a proportionately 

 long footnote for introducing ' discussions too far removed from 

 the objects of attention of a Queen.' ' Queen ' is in capitals ! l 



To return, however, to the Buet. We may best do the Delucs 

 justice as mountaineers by summarising the account of their first 

 climbs which appeared in the English edition of Bourrit's work. 2 



It was in August 1765 that the two brothers started to 

 attempt the Buet for the first time. From the neighbourhood 

 of Geneva, Jean had observed to the north of the ' pikes in 

 the form of obelisks ' which rose in a forbidding fence round the 

 mighty dome of Mont Blanc, a mountain whose summit, though 

 always covered with ice, seemed to him accessible and proper for 

 his experiments. 



' He endeavoured then to inform himself of the name of this 

 mountain, the place where it was situated, the road necessary to be 

 taken to arrive at it, and whether or not it was to be ascended ; but 



1 A full and appreciative account of the character and the scientific and 

 religious writings of the brothers Deluc will be found in Sayous' Le dixhuitieme 

 Siecle a V Stranger, vol. i. ch. 12. 



8 Bourrit, Description of the Glaciers of Savoy (English edition, Norwich, 1776). 



M 



