244 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



crossed from Chamonix to Courmayeur, or vice versd, by the 

 Mer de Glace. 



Whether this putative hunters' pass is referred to by the 

 words ' Col Major ' found on old maps is a wholly distinct question. 

 On some of these maps we find ' Col Major ou Cormoyeu,' which 

 suggests a cartographer's or copyist's error. There is no ground 

 whatever for the suggestion that de Saussure had ever heard the 

 pass so designated. In writing to his wife he expressly states that 

 this point in the watershed had been called the Tacul, though 

 nowhere near the spot at the junction of the sources of the 

 Mer de Glace properly so named, and that he had consequently 

 with the approval of his guides named it the Col du Geant after 

 the adjacent Aiguille. 



It was not till September 1786 that the first fully recorded 

 attempt to force a pass at the head of the Mer de Glace was made. 

 At that date, M. Exchaquet, the director of the mines at Servoz, 

 a man who knew as much about the mountains of Savoy as any- 

 one then living, and was frequently consulted by de Saussure, 

 resolved to put into execution the project he had long had in his 

 mind of rediscovering the lost pass. 



Exchaquet 's share in Alpine exploration deserves more notice 

 than it has generally received. His correspondence with de 

 Saussure and Wyttenbach shows him to have been an observer 

 of considerable intelligence, specially in matters connected with 

 meteorology. He had also a talent for topography, which he put 

 to practical and profitable use by constructing and selling relief 

 models of the chain of Mont Blanc, of part of the Valais, and of 

 the St. Gotthard group. The models of Mont Blanc were sold for 

 the high price of thirty louis. They were made of wood, the 

 snows and pastures shown in their natural colours, and the 

 glaciers represented by fragments of spar tinted sky-blue. Their 

 size was about 3 feet 6 inches by 15 inches. 1 



1 There was at the time a certain demand for reliefs of this kind, resulting 

 from the newly awakened interest in the Alps. The only copy of Exchaquet's 

 relief of Mont Blanc believed to exist is that presented by Baron de Gersdorf 

 to the Museum at Gorlitz. In London, thirty years later, J. B. Troye, of Frith 

 Street, Soho, who advertised himself as a pupil of Exchaquet, and had probably 

 been his workman, offered for sale small models of Mont Blanc. One, perhaps 

 of his construction, is in the possession of the Alpine Club. General Pfyffer'p 

 and Meyer's models of the Swiss Alps have been noticed elsewhere (see p. 163). 



It is recorded that on Napoleon's visit to Chamb6ry in 1805, a model of 



