THE ASCENT OF MONT BLANC 



875 



Soon they descended, the doctor al- 

 most as helpless as a child, and towards 

 midnight arrived at their former camp 

 on the Montagne de la Cote, where they 

 passed the night, suffering intensely from 

 frost-bite. Next morning the wretched 

 doctor was completely blind and had to 

 make his entry into Chamonix hanging 

 to the strap of his guide's knapsack! 

 Balmat was himself almost unrecogniz- 

 able, with his "red eyes and blue ears." 

 But with all the pain he suffered, he 

 <:ould enter Chamonix with a proud step, 

 for he had conquered where so many had 

 failed. 



The poor peasant guide now became 

 known far beyond the limits of his native 

 valley, even receiving a patent of nobility 

 from the King of Sardinia, and he was 

 lienceforward known as "Balmat, dit 

 Mont Blanc." 



De Saussure soon learned of his suc- 

 cess, and the next year, guided by Bal- 

 mat and accompanied by 17 other guides 

 and a servant, with a great quantity of 

 physical apparatus, he made the ascent. 

 Eater he ascended the Col du Geant, a 

 lofty pass in the range, and had two en- 

 gravings made which show the manner 

 in which he made his mountain ascents. 



In the one showing his party descend- 

 ing, they are all wandering about like 

 sheep ; no rope is visible, each person 

 lielping himself with his alpenstock as 

 "best he may, and each, it may be re- 

 marked, using the stock wrongly, plac- 

 ing it before rather than behind him, on 

 which to lean his weight, de Saussure 

 liimself seeming to be on the point of 

 liarpooning his own foot ! 



AN e:xtraordinary MOUNTAINKERING 

 COSTUME 



The Professor is dressed in a long- 

 tailed silk coat with huge buttons — the 

 very coat is said to be preserved in the 

 ancestral mansion at Genthod, near Ge- 

 neva — and he looks much more as if he 

 were ready for an afternoon promenade 

 than a climb on the ice fields of Mont 

 Blanc. One of the party is carrying a 

 ladder for crossing crevasses, a custom 

 now for the most part given up. 



Thus at length the mountain monarch 

 vv^as fairly conquered, and from this time 



on his neck may be said to have been 

 bent beneath the yoke of man. But in 

 the succeeding quarter century there 

 were but a half dozen other ascents. 

 Until 1819 the only variation on Bal- 

 mat's route was at the beginning of the 

 route, the Montagne de la Cote being 

 given up for the route to the left of the 

 glacier "des Bossons" by the Pierre a 

 I'Echelle. In 1827 the so-called "corri- 

 dor" route from the Grand Plateau was 

 discovered by Sir Charles Fellowes, and 

 since then the upper route by the "Ancien 

 Passage" has been abandoned. In 1859 

 the route over the ridge of the "Bosses," 

 which had proven too much for Balmat's 

 companions, was found practicable, and 

 is now even more popular than the "cor- 

 ridor" route. Still another route from 

 St. Gervais — further to the south of 

 Chamonix, in the valley — up over the 

 Aiguille and Dome du Goiiter and the 

 ridge of the "Bosses," has been coming 

 into favor; and, besides these three 

 routes on the French side, there are five 

 others from Courmayeur, on the Italian 

 side, though little used. 



Many things have increased Chamo- 

 nix's fame since de Saussure's day. In 

 1832 Alexandre Dumas visited the vil- 

 lage and gave great publicity to it by the 

 chapters in his "Impressions du Voyage," 

 wherein he described his famous inter- 

 view with the then aged Balmat. In 1842 

 Professor Forbes carried on his exten- 

 sive studies relative to the movements of 

 glaciers, establishing the fame of the great 

 glacier, the Mer de Glace. 



But it was the popular lectures given 

 all over England by Albert Smith, and 

 illustrated by dioramic views of his as- 

 cent of Mont Blanc, in 185 1, which espe- 

 cially spread the fame of the mountain. 

 As a result of these lectures, there were 

 64 ascents in the six years following 

 185 1, whereas there had been only 57 

 in the preceding 64 years. 



THE AIGUII.I.ES MORE DII^I^ICUIvT THAN 

 THE MOUNTAIN 



And since 1851 not a summer has 

 passed without at least one ascent being 

 accomplished. The other peaks in the 

 range have also gradually been van- 

 quished one by one. The last to surrender 



