272 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



He seems to fall into further confusion in describing the highest 

 peaks of Monte Rosa as ' lying to the left or west of the gap from 

 which the valley is visible.' The Lyskamm is the principal object 

 from Val de Lys, but it is almost incredible that de Saussure should 

 have confused it with the Zumstein Spitze, which an erroneous 

 calculation had led him to take for the culminating summit. Is 

 it possible that he took the Col delle Loccie to have been the point 

 reached by the explorers ? 



From St. Jacques d'Ayas, their next stage, the travellers hoped 

 to cross the dimes Blanches to Zermatt in a day. But being caught 

 in mists on the pass they followed the local guide's advice and 

 descended to Breuil, where they were detained twenty -four hours 

 by bad weather. The only lodging, the house of a peasant named 

 J. B. Herin (de Saussure calls him Erin), left much to be desired 

 * a little wretched room without bed or window, a kitchen with- 

 out a chimney, and all the shortcomings and inconveniences 

 which combined become vexatious.' The son of de Saussure 's 

 host, a boy of twelve at the time of his first visit, was alive till 

 after 1855, and remembered well de Saussure's party, and, as 

 a boy would, the great store of provisions they brought with 

 them. 1 



After two nights at Breuil they started for the St. Theodule. 

 Up to the middle of the eighteenth century mules not infrequently 

 crossed the pass, and the de Saussures tried to ride over the 

 glacier. It is not surprising to learn that the animals sank deeply 

 into the snow and had all, including the baggage animals, to be 

 relieved of their burdens. Still they showed signs of exhaustion 

 and suffering, uttering ' plaintive cries ' such as de Saussure had 

 never heard before from mules even on the worst paths. ' It 

 was,' he writes, ' the rarity of the air that affected them as it had 

 us on Mont Blanc.' 



On the pass the first object to be noticed was naturally the Mont 

 Cervin or Matterhorn, a 'triangular obelisk of enormous height 

 which looks as if it had been cut out with a chisel. I propose,' 

 says de Saussure, ' to return another year and measure this 

 magnificent rock ! ' For the rest, he refers to the Saasgrat as 

 part of the external cirque of Monte Rosa. On the south, he writes, 



1 See Les Alpes Pennines dans un Jour, par le Chanoine Carrel (Aosta, 1855). 

 The inn at Breuil was not opened till 1856. I first visited it in 1858. 



