328 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSTJRE 



the details of the tour we have some account in the Voyages. 

 This can be supplemented by extracts from de Saussure's letters 

 home and the unpublished diary of his companion. In his first 

 note, written to his wife from his house in the Rue de la Cit6 (he 

 had left her at Genthod), he takes his leave for a five weeks' tour 

 with as much emotion as if he were starting for the North Pole. 

 His reference to the tears of the parting scene help us to under- 

 stand why on other occasions he was apt to slip away at dawn, or 

 even earlier. Three years later, he records that he left home for a 

 visit to the Gries and the St. Gotthard at 4.22 A.M., 'concealing 

 from my wife and children my start, which always causes them 

 acute distress and by its anticipation poisons our last moments.' 

 He seldom set out on any considerable expedition without resort- 

 ing to some similar subterfuge. Madame de Saussure's ' sensi- 

 bility ' was obviously, even for that date, above the average. 

 Good as well as bad news was a trial to her nerves. It is recorded 

 that on one occasion her sister, Madame Tronchin, thought it well 

 to break to her the fact of her wanderer's return rather than to 

 let it be announced by a servant. 



The chief interest of de Saussure's companion's diary lies in the 

 picture it gives of the difficulties of post -travel in a wet autumn. 

 Again and again, first in the Maurienne and then on the plain of 

 Piedmont, the travellers had to take their carriage to pieces and 

 pack it on mules, or to cross flooded rivers in ferry-boats. An 

 enforced halt at Vercelli gave de Saussure opportunity to attempt 

 a sketch. The object which interested him was the beautiful out- 

 line of Monte Rosa. But it was not till nine years later that he 

 first made a closer acquaintance with the rival of Mont Blanc. At 

 Milan de Saussure went to the opera, and reports that the ladies 

 were beautiful, but seemed dull. At Genoa he and Pictet hired a 

 boat and, sailing eastward, took soundings and temperatures of 

 the sea-bottom off Porto Fino, despite their sufferings from sea- 

 sickness. These seem to have affected de Saussure's temper. On 

 his return he wrote home : 



4 1 am worn out with boredom and visits, first a certain Dr. Prato- 

 lungo, longer in his calls than the meadow from which he takes his 

 name, and next some dear fellow-countrymen, very good people, but 

 thinking one can have nothing better to do than entertain them. 

 Then Pictet has a cold, so I have to go alone to pay return calls, and I 



