230 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



After a rest three of the guides went off in the direction of 

 the Dome du Gouter to collect rocks, and, on their way back, to 

 cut some steps for next day. They found a crevasse which had 

 hindered them on the previous ascent was choked, but reported 

 the slope to be very hard and steep. 



The tent once pitched, all the guides crowded in, and after an 

 early supper, 'eaten with appetite but digested with disgust/ 

 de Saussure prepared to endure what proved a ' detestable night 

 sickness, colic, close atmosphere produced by twenty heated and 

 panting inmates.' 



' I was obliged to go out in the middle of the night for fresh air. 

 The magnificent basin, glowing in the light of the moon which shone 

 with the greatest brilliancy in an ebon sky, presented a superb spectacle. 

 Jupiter rose radiant behind the Aiguille du Midi, and the glow reflected 

 from the snows was so brilliant that only stars of the first and second 

 magnitude were visible. After midnight, as we were dropping into 

 sleep, we were awakened by the roar of a great avalanche which 

 covered part of the slope we had to follow on the morrow.' 



Daybreak at last brought the long penance of night to a close. 

 The guides as usual were slow in moving, and then water had to be 

 melted, so that it was 6 A.M. before the party set off. Pioneers 

 were again sent in front to prepare a path. De Saussure writes : 



' After having crossed the second plateau, at the entry to which 

 we had slept, we mounted on the third, and in half an hour reached 

 the foot of the great slope which runs towards the east over the rock 

 which forms the left shoulder of Mont Blanc.' 



De Saussure, whose personal experience of the effect of the 

 rarefied air on Mont Blanc contrasts markedly with his subsequent 

 immunity on the Col du Geant, was already distressed, and had 

 to halt every thirty steps for a few moments to regain breath. 

 After forty minutes' climb the party came on the track of the 

 avalanche that had fallen in the night, 



' and each of us made to himself his own reflections. Pierre Balmat 

 said to me very politely that I must recover my breath and try to cross 

 the avalanche track without halting. I, who felt the impossibility of 

 complying, answered him with equal politeness " that the safest spot 

 was where the unstable snows had just fallen " ; and we took breath 

 twice in crossing. The slope now became steeper, and we had to cross 

 a crevasse at the corner of a sirac which barred the passage. This was 



