202 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



mid -September. A further handicap to the expedition was its 

 size and the inclusion in it of Bourrit and his elder son, Isaac, 

 a youth of twenty -one. De Saussure's judgment yielded on this 

 occasion to his kindness. Having regard to the fact that Bourrit 

 had made the first serious attempt to open this route, he broke 

 his usual practice of taking no companion except his guides, and 

 acquiesced in the desire of the two Bourrits to be allowed to join 

 the party. 



The first night (13th September) was spent in a rough cabin 

 de Saussure had had built on a brow known as the Pierre 

 Ronde at the base of the rocks of the Aiguille du Gouter. The 

 Aiguille de Bionnassay then called the Rogne attracted the 

 climbers' attention by its avalanche-swept sides and great height, 

 but the guides asserted and they were right that from ' the 

 Dome de 1' Aiguille ' they would look down on it. 1 De Saussure 

 busied himself with his experiments. His boiling-point ther- 

 mometer proved a failure. 



' But,' he writes, ' the beauty of the evening and the magnificence 

 of the spectacle presented by the sunset from my observatory consoled 

 me for this disappointment. The evening vapours, like a light gauze, 

 tempered the brilliancy of the sun and half hid the vast expanse under 

 our feet, forming a belt of the most beautiful purple which embraced 

 all the western horizon, while to the east the snows of the base of Mont 

 Blanc, illuminated by the rich glow, offered a singularly magnificent 

 spectacle. As the vapour fell lower and condensed, this belt grew 

 narrower and deeper in colour until it turned blood-red, and at the 

 same moment little clouds which rose above it threw out so vivid a 

 light that they resembled stars or flaming meteors. I returned to 

 the spot after night had completely fallen. The sky was then per- 

 fectly pure and cloudless. The mist was confined to the bottom of 

 the valleys ; the stars, brilliant but without any trace of sparkle, 

 poured an exceedingly faint, pale light over the tops of the mountains, 

 which yet was sufficient to distinguish their groups and distances. 

 The peace and complete silence which reigned over this vast space, 

 magnified further by the imagination, affected me with a kind of 

 terror. I fancied myself the only survivor of the universe, and that I 

 was gazing on its corpse stretched at my feet. Sad as are ideas of 

 this description, they have a fascination which it is difficult to resist. 



1 This is a proof that the guides had, on the previous occasion, really reached 

 the Dome du Gouter. 



