236 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



August, only five days after de Saussure's ascent, climbed Mont 

 Blanc. He mentions that he picked up on the mountain Bourrit's 

 blue spectacles and made use of them. 



Sleeping at de Saussure's second cabin which de Saussure had 

 made no use of Beaufoy reached the top at 10.30 A.M. and stayed 

 there two hours, thus proving that de Saussure's original project 

 for dividing the day's work was a very feasible one. Paccard, 

 in the memoranda relating to ascents of Mont Blanc which he 

 left behind him, remarks that Beaufoy walked like a guide. 



Poor Bourrit, who is recorded to have wept on witnessing de 

 Saussure's arrival on the summit, lingered on at Chamonix only to 

 watch and chronicle his rivals' successes, and to prepare ladders 

 for another attempt that never came off. He found some dis- 

 traction in conversing with Beaufoy's young wife. The help she 

 was able to give her husband in writing out his observations filled 

 Bourrit with admiration for the education of Englishwomen. 1 

 But Beaufoy himself disappointed the sentimental Precentor. 

 For when on being asked in his wife's presence if his first thought 

 on gaining the summit had been of her, he replied, ' Not at all.' 

 In matters of the heart Englishmen are apt to do themselves 

 injustice in the eyes of members of less reticent nationalities, who 

 do not realise that still waters may run deep. 



Beaufoy was a man of scientific tastes and attainments, and 

 a paper on his ascent was read before the Royal Society on 

 the 13th December of the same year. 2 He appears to have 

 been more successful than Sir William Hamilton in calling 

 the attention of the Society to the eminent claims of his pre- 

 decessor, for in the following year de Saussure was admitted to a 

 seat on its benches. But though Beaufoy himself became a 

 Fellow, his paper on Mont Blanc was not considered worth printing 

 in the Transactions of that learned body. Nor did the Relation 

 Abregee receive that honour. 



Colonel Beaufoy as he afterwards became kept up his 

 interest in science and exploration throughout his life. In 1818 



1 Bourrit asserts that Mrs. Beaufoy was only nineteen. She had, however, 

 been married three years, and had two children. 



8 The paper was reprinted from the original manuscript, in the possession of 

 the Royal Society, in the Alpine Journal, vol. xxix. (1915). It had previously 

 appeared in the number for 18th February 1817 of The Annals of Philosophy, a 

 scientific magazine. 



