CHAPTER X 

 MONTE ROSA 



THE bold and, from the scientific point of view, wonderfully success- 

 ful adventure on the Col du Geant might well have seemed to de 

 Saussure a fitting conclusion to his Alpine career ; and, close on 

 the age of fifty, he might have been content to spend his summers 

 in the society of his family and the modest luxury of Genthod. 

 There were other and more serious reasons which would have 

 sufficiently justified him had he done so. He had public as well 

 as private anxieties. Politics at Geneva had, for the third time 

 in his life, reached a violent crisis one in which he was to find 

 himself forced to play an active part. Moreover, his fortune was 

 invested in French securities, and France was now on the brink of 

 the Great Revolution. 



But the call of the mountains was too strong. Many years 

 before de Saussure had admired and tried to sketch the noble 

 outline of Monte Rosa seen from the Piedmontese plain. It had 

 now been ascertained that it was the only close rival of Mont 

 Blanc among Alpine summits, or, as was then believed, among 

 the mountains of the old world. His correspondent, Count 

 Morozzo of Turin, had brought to his notice the beauty of Val 

 Anzasca and the convenient situation of Macugnaga at the very 

 base of the snows. De Saussure could not desist from his travels 

 until he had endeavoured to accurately measure and make the 

 tour of the mountain. His plan was a comprehensive one to 

 cross the Simplon, go up to the head of Val Anzasca, and then 

 find a way round to the St. Theodule and Zermatt. 



The only criticism we might make nowadays on this pro- 

 gramme, which was repeated in the reverse direction by Forbes 

 in 1843, is that de Saussure might better have begun with a visit 



to Saas and the passage of the Monte Moro, a track known and 

 202 



