266 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



It occurred to me to have recourse to the Cur6, who, luckily, proved a 

 very kindly man, and at once gave us something to eat ; then, on 

 seeing the letters I had for the notables of the village, which I had 

 been unable to present on account of their being either really abroad 

 or in hiding, ho wrote a note to a sort of Monsieur with whom we had 

 reckoned on lodging, but who had bolted to an hour's distance on the 

 mountains, and sent it off by a messenger. The " Monsieur," reassured, 

 came back at once and has lodged us very comfortably ; we have 

 each our room ; but we have very poor fare, depending on the powers 

 of Etienne [his servant], whose recipes are very limited. We are 

 greatly bored by the Italian boastfulness and volubility of our host, 

 whom we dare not offend lest he should show us the door.' 



At Macugnaga de Saussure spent eleven days, much of the 

 time in broken weather. The wet day following his arrival was 

 devoted to a visit to the gold-mines near Pestarena, a few miles 

 lower down the valley. They had at one time employed a 

 thousand labourers, but there were now not more than half that 

 number. The principal proprietor was a Signer Testoni, whose 

 mines produced the equivalent of 66,560 French livres (3300) 

 annually, leaving, after paying all expenses and the royalty of a 

 tenth due to Count Borromeo, a net profit of 650 to the proprietor. 

 The product at the date of de Saussure 's visit was falling off, and 

 the peasant owners of the smaller mines showed much eagerness 

 to part with their property to the strangers. It is a common 

 experience of early explorers in an out-of-the-way mountain 

 district to be taken for mining prospectors. The first Chamonix 

 ice-axes were picks, and even in 1865 Tyrolese peasants found it 

 difficult to imagine they could have any other use. Twenty- 

 five years later, in the wilds of the Caucasus, the writer was 

 pressed by a Suanetian prince, educated at Odessa, to induce our 

 countrymen to search for the hidden gold in the mountains 

 which feed the sources of the Ingur, the fabled stream of the 

 Golden Fleece. The mines in Val Anzasca were for many 

 years, and possibly still are, worked, though on a very small scale, 

 by an English company. 



De Saussure during his stay in this remote spot was not 

 altogether dependent for distraction during wet days on the 

 exciting news of the fall of the Bastille contained in his home 

 letters. The Cure" proved to be a man of intelligence ; he had a 



