284 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



being as yet [he was twenty-one] trained for mountaineering, I 

 stumbled at almost every step. I did not get back to Chamonix till 

 late at night, and in a state of fever and fatigue from which it took 

 me some time to recover.' [ Voyages, 654.] 



In later years some of de Saussure's best climbing was done at 

 the base of the Chamonix Aiguilles, where he had at least one 

 narrow escape from falling stones. 



In his visit to the Jardin and expeditions on Mont Blanc and 

 the Col du G6ant, de Saussure had to deal with formidable icefalls 

 at a date when icecraft at Chamonix was in a very rudimentary 

 condition. Simler two hundred years before had described the 

 proper use of the rope and snow spectacles as practised by travellers 

 on the St. Th6odule. But the crystal-hunters employed by de 

 Saussure seem to have neglected the rope, or employed it, if at all, 

 not as a precaution, but as a means of rescue after a comrade had 

 dropped into a crevasse. They carried very long alpenstocks, and 

 stuck short axes, such as they used to extract crystals, in their 

 belts. De Saussure describes how two of his guides held one of 

 these poles, more than 8 feet long, between them horizontally 

 while he or his son leant on the middle. This was the attitude in 

 which he chose to be represented in the plates that served to 

 illustrate his feats. A tourist of the period (Bordier) declared that 

 Alpine peasants were in the habit of holding these long staves in 

 this manner while crossing a glacier, so that in case of a fall the 

 two ends might catch on the side of the crevasse, and the moun- 

 taineer seize the moment to spring out. The feat is more easily 

 described than performed ! 



It has always to be borne in mind that with de Saussure 

 climbing except perhaps in the case of Mont Blanc, and even with 

 Mont Blanc only in private moments was considered not as an 

 end in itself, but as a means to scientific research. The Japanese 

 climb with a religious aim, the eighteenth century climbed with 

 scientific objects, the nineteenth and twentieth have done so 

 occasionally, but more often for health or exercise. De Saussure's 

 aim was always serious. He appreciated in his leisure moments 

 no one more thoroughly the beauty of the storehouses of snow 

 and the splendours to be seen on the summits. His descriptions 

 of the view from the Crammpnt and his last sunset on the Col du 

 Geant remain as evidence of his feeling for mountain effects. But 



