198 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT BE SAUSSUKE 



the more enterprising among them were now excited to attempt 

 higher ventures that might bring higher rewards. The first 

 serious attempt was made in 1775, when four guides attempted 

 the obvious approach by the Montagne de la Cote, the ridge 

 which separates the lower portions of the Glaciers des Bossons 

 and de Taconnaz. The party entered on the ice and advanced 

 as far as the level of the Grands Mulcts. There they were 

 stopped, not so much by any difficulties of the ground as by 

 their own sensations of fatigue and nausea. They imputed 

 their failure to the suffocating heat and a total loss of appetite. 

 It probably arose as much from moral as from physical causes. 

 The result, anyhow, was that the discouraging report the adven- 

 turers brought back put a stop to any further attempts for 

 another eight years. 



The frequent references in almost all early mountaineering 

 records to physical discomforts may largely be accounted for by 

 the low level of the climbers' bivouacs and the late hour at which 

 they were apt to start in the morning, which resulted in the 

 midday sun finding them still toiling uphill in soft snow. They 

 themselves were apt to attribute their sufferings to the stagnation 

 of the air in the snow valley under the Dome du Gouter. That 

 mountain-sickness is felt less on a windy than on a still day has 

 been proved by many examples. But as the early climbers 

 suffered equally on the topmost ridges and on the summit itself, 

 it is obvious that the main source of their indisposition must be 

 looked for elsewhere. 



In 1783 a party of Chamoniards made a fresh attack by the 

 same route with a similar result. They got nearly two thousand 

 feet higher as far as the Petit Plateau, under ' the arch of ice 

 which crowns the rocks of the Little Mont Blanc ' (the Dome 

 du Gouter). Here one of the party fell ill and his companions 

 abandoned the climb. A stalwart guide, Lombard, known as Le 

 Grand Jorasse, afterwards told de Saussure that it was no use 

 taking provisions, that if called on to try again he should provide 

 himself only with a parasol and a smelling-bottle. De Saussure 's 

 comment written in 1786 was : 



' When I try to figure to myself this stout and robust mountaineer 

 climbing the snows with, in one hand, a little parasol, and in the other 

 a flask of Eau Sanspareil, the picture seems so strange and ridiculous 



