THE COL DU GfiANT 255 



anxiety as to our future, the more so since we have learnt how to 

 procure, if not all the conveniences of life, at any rate preservatives 

 against the worse inconveniences. This bad weather has relieved us 

 of M. Exchaquet, who had the indiscretion to bring with him four 

 guides, or sightseers, and we were at a loss where to put them. He 

 only stayed with us twenty-four hours, and took advantage of an 

 interval of fine weather to go down to Courmayeur.' 



Their only other visitors on the heights were three chamois. 

 But there were lesser forms of life in the number of butterflies 

 which were carried up by the wind and took refuge on the sheltered 

 side of the mountain, where they afforded an easy prey to the 

 choughs, whose gambols enlivened the snowy wilderness. 



In his Voyages, published eight years later, de Saussure gives 

 a more detailed account of the storm than he had thought prudent 

 to send home at the time : 



' On the following night [4th-5th July] we were assailed by the most 

 terrible storm I have ever witnessed. It arose an hour after mid- 

 night with a south-west wind of such violence that I expected at 

 every instant it would carry away the stone hut in which my son and 

 I were sleeping. The gale had this peculiarity, that it was periodically 

 interrupted by intervals of the most perfect calm. In these intervals 

 we heard the wind howling below us in the depth of the Allee Blanche, 

 while the most absolute tranquillity reigned round our cabin. But 

 these calm moments were succeeded by blasts of an indescribable 

 violence ; double blows like discharges of artillery. We felt even the 

 mountain shake under our mattresses ; the wind penetrated through 

 the cracks in the walls of the hut, it once lifted my sheets and rugs 

 and froze me from head to foot. At daybreak the gale fell a little, 

 but it soon rose again and came back accompanied by snow, which 

 penetrated on all sides into the hut. We then took refuge in one of 

 the tents, which gave better protection. We found the guides obliged 

 continually to hold up the poles for fear the violence of the gale should 

 upset them and carry them away with the tent. 



' About seven continuous hail and thunder were added to the 

 storm ; one flash struck so near us that we heard distinctly a spark 

 slide hissing down the wet canvas of the tent just behind the place 

 occupied by my son. The air was so full of electricity that directly I 

 put only the point of my electrometer outside the tent the bubbles 

 separated as far as the threads would allow them, and at almost every 

 explosion of the thunder the electricity changed from positive to 

 negative or vice versd.' [Voyages, 2030.] 



