192 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



at the accuracy of topographical detail attained in such difficult 

 subjects as the chain of Mont Blanc from the Allee Blanche, and 

 still more at the power and vigour shown in many of the blotted- 

 in sketches of individual peaks. The rock structure was all- 

 important for de Saussure's purposes ; in the preface to the Voyages 

 he tells us how he has insisted on its reproduction. Doubtless 

 the connection between them was most advantageous to Bourrit 

 by necessarily fixing his attention on facts, and forbidding any 

 indulgence in the prettinesses of which he was far too fond. 

 But with every disposition to estimate Bourrit 's work as kindly as 

 de Saussure does in the passage referred to, we are forced to admit 

 that, even judged by the standard of his time, it shows little real 

 artistic sense or power. It cannot compare with that of Wolf, 

 the painter who furnished the plates of the Aar glaciers and other 

 scenes in the Bernese Oberland produced at about the same 

 date. 



The Buet was not long in becoming a recognised excursion for 

 adventurous tourists, as well as for the men of science who found 

 it a convenient observatory and post for measuring Mont Blanc. 

 The Delucs climbed the mountain twice. So did de Saussure, 

 in 1776 and 1778. He narrates an incident at the chalets 

 above Valorsine which shows that visitors were still a rarity : 



' We were conducted by a bevy of young girls, very lively and in 

 high spirits, to whom the object of our journey, our dress, our mode 

 of speech, even our least movements, were matters for immoderate 

 bursts of laughter. 1 They accompanied us as far as La Courterai 

 with unflagging mirth, and even succeeded in communicating to us 

 some of their gaiety.' 



Bourrit returned often to a mountain which suited so well 

 his climbing powers. Before the end of the century three English 

 ladies, the Misses Parminter, who, we are told, had already made a 

 long Alpine tour, found their way to the top, escorted by Bourrit 's 



1 An account of a similar incident in the same locality in 1780 may be found 

 in the Alpine Journal, vol. xxxii. p. 75. These lively damsels were natives of the 

 valley Ruskin selected as an example of 'mountain gloom ' ! Had he met a similar 

 troop on his own ascent of the Buet (Alpine Journal, vol. xxxii. p. 335) we might 

 have lost one of the most eloquent chapters in Modern Painters \ Bordier also 

 expatiates on the bonheur of the inhabitants of the Trient Valley in the eighteenth 

 century as an example of Rousseau's ideal rural happiness. 



