MONT BLANC 213 



arrange with Jacques Balmat to procure a staff of guides for the 

 ascent. De Saussure's name was not to be mentioned in con- 

 nection with these preparations, which were to be attributed to 

 the orders of an Italian nobleman 1 a step, doubtless, due to de 

 Saussure's habitual reluctance to arouse the anxiety of his family. 

 No time was lost. On 15th August he left Geneva, by his own 

 account in a state of high nervous excitement. He writes in his 

 diary : ' My head is so full of my project that it is a fatigue, and 

 almost an illness, if I leave off thinking of it for a moment. It 

 affects my brain so as to cause me an emotion that is very dis- 

 tressing. In short, it is a thorn that I must absolutely pluck out 

 of my foot.' On the 18th he was at Chamonix and ready to 

 start. Next day he called at Paccard's, and was disappointed to 

 find that ' ce diable de Docteur ! ' as he calls him in his diary 

 whom he had counted on to take observations in the valley 

 corresponding with his on the mountain, had gone off again in the 

 direction of Mont Blanc . De Saussure at first imagined he might 

 be trying to repeat the ascent. Next day, however, as he was 

 himself starting for the Cote, he learnt that Chamonix gossip had 

 alarmed him needlessly. The Doctor's object had been limited 

 to an endeavour to cross the crevasses of the upper Bossons 

 Glacier from the Montagne de la Cote to the foot of the Aiguille 

 du Midi. It was, in fact, an attempt to open the route now 

 always taken in ascents from Chamonix. For the moment the 

 attempt failed, but the fact that it was made by the Doctor and 

 his brother, a lawyer, with one guide, is perhaps the best comment 

 on Bourrit's depreciation of the Doctor's energy and climbing 

 powers. Before his own start de Saussure succeeded in finding 

 Paccard at home and in arranging with him and his brother for 

 the simultaneous observations he wanted being taken at Chamonix 

 during his ascent. In the afternoon the party, de Saussure and 

 his servant, Tetu de Saussure's unfortunate valet had always 

 to share his adventures with sixteen guides, set out for the 

 bivouac . At the end of thirty-six hours he was back at Chamonix, 

 driven down by the doubtful weather and the guides' advice. 



On the 22nd August, the day after his return, de Saussure again 

 visited the Paccards, in order to give them further instructions in 

 the method of ascertaining heights by the use of the barometer. 

 1 The letter was, in fact, taken to Chamonix by an Italian traveller. 



