MONT BLANC 231 



one of the worst places ; the slope is 39, the precipice below is frightful, 

 and the snow, hard on the surface, was flour beneath. Steps were cut, 

 but the legs insecurely placed in this flour rested on a lower crust which 

 was often very thin, and then slipped. Here I found the pcle held by 

 two guides as a balustrade for me on the side of the precipice was of 

 great service.' [Diary.] 



This steep ascent, known henceforth as the ' Ancien Passage,' 

 lasted for two hours before the party gained the little depression 

 or col between the eastern shoulder and the final cupola of Mont 

 Blanc. 



' Immense view of Italy, but sickness. I eat some bread 

 and frozen beef, raw and nasty, and drink some water which 

 had been carried up for me.' There now remained to climb 

 only some 900 feet up a moderate slope, free from any difficulty 

 or danger. But de Saussure 's sufferings from mountain sickness 

 became acute, he felt faint and dizzy, his legs failed under him, 

 between every fifteen or sixteen steps he had to rest on his stick. 

 The only palliative was to face and inhale the fresh northern 

 breeze. 1 The party spent two hours on this last slope, for which 

 Whymper's Guide allows fifty minutes. 



' Since,' writes de Saussure, ' I had had for the last two hours 

 under my eyes almost all one sees from the summit, the arrival was no 

 coup de thldtre it did not even give me all the pleasure one might 

 have imagined ; my most lively and agreeable sensation was to feel 

 myself at the end of my uncertainties ; for the length of the struggle, 

 the recollection and the still vivid impression of the exertion it had 



1 See sec. 559 in Voyages. There de Saussure lays down about 12,000 feet as 

 the height at which he and the majority of dwellers in mountain districts begin 

 to feel the results of the rarity of the air directly they undertake any exertion, 

 mental or physical. It may be worth noting that in the first two ascents of 

 Elbruz, 18,500 feet, one on a windy the other on a still day, both made by moun- 

 taineers in good training, no one suffered on the windy day, while all more or less 

 suffered on the still day. In the Alps Mont Blanc is exceptional with regard to 

 mountain sickness. The continuous, monotonous snowy treadmill of the ascent 

 may partly account for this. On Monte Rosa very few cases of sickness are 

 recorded ; nor, as a rule, do climbers suffer inconvenience elsewhere in the Alps. 

 It is noteworthy that since fair quarters have been provided on Mont Blanc 

 much less has been heard of serious indisposition on the part of travellers 

 and guides. The men who slept at the Vallot hut, while employed to 

 build Jansen's hut on the top, climbed the last slope at a great pace : 

 experio crede. I once tried to keep up with them in order to conceal 

 from too inquisitive telescopes in the Guides' Bureau that in our party of three 

 there was only one guide, a breach of the local regulations. 



