416 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



is noteworthy, and goes far to show that there were no serious 

 difficulties for hardy pedestrians at that date in wandering through 

 the more remote valleys of the High Alps. The Zermatt and 

 Saas valleys were entered, the St. Theodule crossed and Val 

 Tournanche and Courmayeur visited. The Val de Bagnes, 

 Chermontane, Arolla, Ferpecle were explored. In the Bernese 

 Oberland the collectors penetrated, besides more familiar sites, the 

 Gasteren Thai and Kien Thai. In the Orisons they visited the 

 Albula, Maloya, Septimer, Bernina, Scaletta, Val di Fraele ; in 

 Canton Ticino, Monte Generoso. 



Haller expresses the hope that his high flora may be nearly 

 complete, but recommends a serious student to spend two or 

 three months at the Baths of St. Moritz, or at one of the highest 

 villages in the Rhaetian Alps, or at the hospice on the Simplon. 

 ' Thus he would not pay a mere passing and breathless visit to the 

 highest crests, but be able as a neighbour to despoil them at his 

 leisure of their riches.' The choice of localities could hardly be 

 improved on, and testifies to Haller's local knowledge of the High 

 Alps from a botanist's point of view. 



Haller's duties and pursuits did not prevent him from keeping 

 up an immense correspondence, much of which has been preserved. 

 His letters , on the whole , are disappointing . Largely occupied with 

 commissions, botanical exchanges, and political details, they are 

 only occasionally lightened by sententious apophthegms. He was 

 constitutionally something of a pessimist and given to be troubled 

 about many things. In politics and religion he was uncom- 

 promisingly conservative and orthodox. He looked on his 

 dearest friend Bonnet as a dangerous freethinker, and on demo- 

 cratic Geneva as a city on the path to perdition. He stood as the 

 champion of the Reformed Church, of establishments civil and 

 religious ; he was as a rock of refuge to men perturbed by the 

 waves of revolution and scepticism that were fast rising on all 

 sides. A mind so constituted and so active might have been 

 expected to escape the morbid religious terrors fostered by the 

 stricter forms of Protestantism. That Haller fell a victim to 

 them in his later years must be attributed mainly to an overtaxed 

 brain and an anxious temperament. His correspondence with 

 Bonnet, which fills seven volumes of manuscript, deals largely 

 with religion and dogma : he is dissatisfied with his old friend's 



