346 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



that he was forbidden on medical advice to resume them, since his 

 continual throat delicacy did not allow him to give them without 

 risk. 1 He added, it is true, that he was also anxious to make 

 progress with his book, of which only one volume had yet been 

 published. His resignation was doubtless made easier to him by 

 the promise that his friend and disciple, M. A. Pictet, should, with- 

 out any competition, succeed him in the professorship. Of the 

 character of his teaching and the appreciation of it by his con- 

 temporaries, the reader will find an account later on. 



In the winter of 1786 an interesting discovery was made by 

 peasants in the bed of the Rhone near Geneva of two ele- 

 phant's tusks, some five feet in length. One of the discoverers 

 stated they had found many large bones in the same place. 

 De Saussure acquired the tusks for his cabinet, and they are now 

 in the Museum at Geneva. I understand that experts are not 

 disposed to consider them of prehistoric date, and it may there- 

 fore be still open as Ebel long ago suggested for one of 

 the many intrepid scholars who have plunged into the inter- 

 minable controversy as to Hannibal's passage of the Alps to 

 cite them as evidence that the Carthaginian general came this way. 



We have now reached the years in which de Saussure 's moun- 

 taineering career culminated : the attempt on the Aiguille du 

 Gouter in 1785, the ascent of Mont Blanc in 1787, the sojourn on 

 the Col du Geant in 1788, and the visits to Monte Rosa in 1789 and 

 1792. The story of these adventures has been told already. 2 

 In December of 1786 Bonnet reports that his nephew is keeping 

 himself in training for Mont Blanc by climbing the stairs of his tall 

 city house eight or nine times a day. His newly married daughter 

 wrote from Paris to urge him to come and enjoy the social success 

 ensured by his scientific reputation, from the reflection of which 

 she was profiting. But he was much too occupied and too intent 

 on accomplishing his lifelong ambition to set his feet on the snows 

 that he had always before his eyes when he looked across the lake 

 from the garden at Genthod. 



In the spring of 1787 partly, perhaps, to distract his wife's 

 thoughts from the preparations for his great adventure, but also 



1 See de Saussure's letter of January 12, 1786, to the Rector of the Academy 

 (de Saussure MSS.). 



1 See chapters viii., ix., x., xi. 



