THE BUET 181 



A second ascent l of the Buet was made in 1772 by J. A. Deluc, 

 his brother, and a young Genevese clergyman named Dentan, 

 from the chalets of Anterne by a different route, recommended 

 by their guides. Deluc 's object was to make further observa- 

 tions. Unluckily, at the chalets he again broke his thermometer. 

 His account of the accident is a specimen of the naive enthusiasm 

 of the early observers : ' I looked with emotion for my ther- 

 mometer ; it was broken. I gave a cry which shook the cabin.' 

 Happily, the hygrometer survived to reach the summit, and 

 afterwards to be honoured with a place in Queen Charlotte's 

 apartments. The climbers took eight hours to reach the top, 

 and on their return they were benighted and caught in a thunder- 

 storm among the cliffs of the mountain. From this unpleasant 

 situation they were rescued by the mistress of the chalet in which 

 they had passed the previous night. Her courageous conduct 

 and refusal to accept any recompense suggest to Deluc some 

 of his usual reflections on the virtues of the mountaineer, and he 

 concludes his story with the exclamation, ' Je me reprocherois 

 tou jours si Anterne pouvoit devenir un lieu frequente ! ' Else- 

 where, however, with an inconsistency not uncommon among 

 travellers, he pronounces the Buet to be ' the most engaging to 

 a man of taste of all the mountains of the Alps,' and expresses a 

 hope that some of his readers may undertake its ascent. 



It is now the turn of Deluc 's follower on the Buet, Marc 

 Theodore Bourrit, to be brought on the stage. The faithful 

 historian must feel some diffidence in attempting a sketch of this 

 many-sided and unequal character. Deluc was an enthusiast in 

 his feeling for the mountains, but his enthusiasm was not free 

 from the affectation of the age. Bourrit 's love of the Alps was 

 absolutely genuine, and for its sake the critic who shares his 

 passion is disposed to forgive him much and even to feel a touch 

 of compunction when called on to record the too obvious weak- 

 nesses which were combined with this sympathetic quality. 



We owe the following vivid contemporary sketch of ' the 

 Historiographer of the Alps ' as Bourrit liked to be called to a 

 Herr Fischer of Berlin, who, having visited Geneva in 1795 and 



1 Lettres Physiques et Morales sur les Montagues et sur VHistoire de la Terre 

 et de PHomme, Deluc, 1778, in which a published account of the expedition by 

 M. Dentan is also referred to. The work is in six volumes. 



