180 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



were apt to turn upon the foot and deceive them,' they had 

 provided themselves with thick woollen socks to put over 

 their shoes, by means of which, and their iron-pointed staves, 

 they ' presumed it possible to step with the utmost security. 

 Their shoes, however, were absolutely improper for such an 

 undertaking.' Happily, the guides had broad soles and 

 hobnails with which they crushed footsteps through the 

 frozen crust. It was about noon when the party gained the 

 summit, ' which commanded in a manner at one view all the 

 straights of the Alps, of whose pikes there were but few 

 which raised their points above them.' The last statement 

 calls for very large qualification. The height of the Buet is 

 only 10,200 feet. 



' For long they were absorbed in contemplation of the scene 

 before them. When their attention returned upon themselves, 

 they found that they were standing only upon a mass of con- 

 gealed snow which jutted over a most frightful precipice. Their 

 first impulse was to retreat with all speed, but soon reflecting 

 that the addition of their weight to this prodigious frozen mass, 

 which had been supported thus for ages, could have no effect to 

 bring it down, they laid aside their fears and went again upon 

 that horrid terrace.' After a halt of three-quarters of an hour, 

 and making two boiling-water observations for height, they 

 retired to some rocks a couple of hundred feet below the top for 

 another hour and a half. During this prolonged stay, ' they were 

 forced, by the absence of any disagreeable sensation, to remark 

 what a wonderfully adaptive machine is the human body, whose 

 equilibrium remains undisturbed within while the atmosphere 

 without is changed in density.' 



The descent was easy. The Delucs observed with envy, 

 though they did not venture to imitate, the mode of progression 

 of their guides, who glissaded, as we now say that is, slid leaning 

 on their poles down the slopes. They found out, however, 

 another method which they thought very agreeable. It consisted 

 in a series of jumps, made ' with regularity and due deliberation,' 

 and would seem to have been modelled on the gait of a kangaroo . 

 At the foot of the snow they were saluted by the whistles of 

 marmots, which suggested to them the signals of banditti. Sixt 

 was regained after nightfall. 



