MONT BLANC 206 



But enough. I have thought it right to put a stop to stories which 

 might have caused me annoyance, and of which I had heard sufficient 

 to give me reason to anticipate their spread ; but there is no call 

 for heroics on your part. One may proclaim oneself a little stronger, 

 a little more active, a little more courageous than one really is, and 

 yet be the most honest fellow in the world. The truth is that though 

 I recognised in you a slight tendency in this direction, I did not fail 

 also to find you very amiable, and I am glad to have made during 

 this excursion a closer and more intimate acquaintance with you than 

 I could have in my lecture-room. If you will not take too tragically 

 the very mild and gentle reproach I have made to you, there is no 

 reason why I may not retain an agreeable recollection of your company, 

 and that we should not be good friends for life. After what I have 

 written to you, sir, I am under no anxiety as to anything that you may 

 say or write, and am very far from asking you to show me your narra- 

 tive. On the contrary, I desire there may be an end to this discussion.' 



Having delivered this adequate reprimand, de Saussure two 

 years later magnanimously referred in his Voyages to his com- 

 panions in the most friendly terms : 



' In excursions of this sort I prefer always to be alone with my 

 glides, but M. Bourrit, who had been the first to call attention to 

 this route, having begged we should attempt it together, I consented 

 with pleasure. We even took with us his son, a youth of twenty-one, 

 whose talents promise him a highly successful career, and whose love of 

 botany and of the great objects that the Alps offer for our contempla- 

 tion have often led him in the footsteps of his father.' [Voyages, 1106.] 



Further light is thrown on the parts played by the chief actors 

 in this expedition by the account given of it in Dr. Paccard's 

 notebook, 1 which must be taken to represent the story told him 

 by the guides. De Saussure, we learn, was on a rope with a 

 guide in front and two behind ; Bourrit pere leant on the shoulder 

 of one guide and was held up behind by the collar of his coat by 

 another. In ascending, Bourrit fils hung on to a guide's coat. 

 Paccard remarks that de Saussure was tied ' like a prisoner ' by 

 a rope under his arms. The comment is suggestive, and illustrates 

 the attitude of the Chamoniards to the use of the rope. It was 

 practically ignored in the earlier glacier expeditions in the chain 



1 Now in the possession of the Alpine Club. Extracts from it are printed in 

 Mr. C. E. Mathew's Annals m of Montjilanc. 



