280 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



of the High Alps, and should look on the Professor's excursions 

 into the mountains as hardy and venturesome, and Madame de 

 Saussure as a wife much to be pitied for her husband's eccentric 

 taste. Alpine travel at the end of the eighteenth century was no 

 doubt rough in a sense, but in the same sense that Dr. Johnson's 

 tour to the Hebrides was rough. When we come to consider the 

 facts in detail, we come to the conclusion that with the resources 

 at de Saussure 's disposal, it involved no great privations or real 

 risks. What hardships he encountered in the course of his travels 

 have often been taken too seriously by his early biographers. 

 Apart from his ascent of Mont Blanc and his sojourn on the Col 

 du G6ant, which come properly under a different heading 

 mountaineering they were in no sense severe tests of endurance, 

 at any rate according to the standard of the latter half of the 

 nineteenth century. 



The highlands of Switzerland and Savoy during de Saussure's 

 life were not the unknown, or uncivilised, regions they are some- 

 times represented. There were frequented mule-tracks over all 

 the great and many of the side passes. The valleys of the Pennine 

 Alps were not untrodden by travellers, or even wholly without 

 accommodation. At most of the places de Saussure visited, 

 Haller's botanical collectors had been before him. One of them had 

 explored the Vispthaler, Saas, and Zermatt, and crossed the St. 

 Theodule into Val Tournanche. Others had been up to the 

 head of the Val d'Herens and Arolla, recesses which de Saussure 

 himself never penetrated. Laborde's great folio volumes, Tableaux 

 de la Suisse, published in 1780, bear witness to the growing know- 

 ledge of the Alps. We find plates not only of the Grindelwald and 

 Rosenlaui Glaciers, but also of the Rhone and Aar and Fiesch 

 Glaciers. No one seems to have explored the Aletsch, though it 

 is mentioned in Griiner's second edition. The Linththal and 

 Pantenbruck in Canton Glarus, Lago di Lucendro on the St. 

 Gotthard, Engelberg, and the Gemmi are all pictured. About the 

 same time (1776-86) our worthy countryman, Archdeacon Coxe, 

 was wandering about the Oberland, the Grisons, and the Val 

 Tellina, making the tour of the Bernina by the Muretto Pass, 

 and compiling his three substantial volumes. At many still 

 out-of-the-way places de Saussure met with reasonable accom- 

 modation ; for instance, in Val d'Ayas, in Val Formazza, at 



