Later, Dr. Paccard forgot what Balmat had done for him and how generously he had shared with him the honour of first conquering the proud monarch, and he began to claim all the credit of the enterprise. He issued a prospectus of a book, which should bring him a reward for his exertions. He promised to give a short history of previous attempts, an account of his own success, and a description of the stones and rocks, the insects, the rare plants, as well as his physical and medical observations, and all necessary notions for those who might wish to visit the glaciers. The subscription price was to be six livres de France for copies on fine paper and four livres, ten sols for copies on ordinary paper. He very cordially invited persons of a higher class who might desire to join in giving the author a prize for this conquest, and they also were promised a share in some of the curiosities found on Mont Blanc. He succeeded by this means in securing a number of subscribers.
De Saussure did not climb the Alpine mountains for sentimental reasons; his purpose was purely scientific, but occasionally in his writings there are passages of charming freshness and humanity. Once he camped out on the bleak Col du Géant for more than two weeks. He thus describes the last evening:—
“The sixteenth and last evening which we spent on the Col du Géant was ravishingly beautiful. It seemed as if all those lofty summits desired that we should not depart from them without regret. The icy wind which had made the most of the nights so uncomfortable did not blow. The peaks which looked down upon us and the snows lying between them took on the most beautiful tints of rose and of carmine. The whole Italian horizon seemed to wear a zone and the full moon came rising above this zone with queenly majesty and glowing with the most exquisite vermilion. The atmosphere about us had that purity and that crystalline limidity which Homer attributes to that of Olympus, while the valleys, filled with mists condensing there, seemed the dwelling-place of gloomy shadows.
“But how shall I depict the night that followed this lovely evening, when after the twilight the moon, shining alone in the sky, poured forth the waves of her silvery light over the vast pile of snow and rock surrounding our cabin? What an astonishing and delicious spectacle under the gentle radiance of the luminary of night was made by those very slopes of snow and ice the sight of which is unendurable in the sunlight. What a magnificent contrast those granite crags, darkened and hewed out with so much precision and boldness, made against these glittering snows! What a moment for meditation! How many trials and privations find compensation in such moments! The soul is elevated, the mind seems to cover a wider outlook, and in the midst of this majestic silence you may believe you hear the voice of Nature and become the secret witness of her most hidden works.”
De Saussure’s “Voyages dans les Alpes” are still well worth reading. He was acquainted with most of the great men of his day; Goethe sought him out to ask his advice; the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, explorer of glaciers, Buffon, David Garrick, Sir William Hamilton and dozens of others were proud of his friendship. In a way, he was the father of modern mountain-climbing. He crossed the Alps by eight different passes and penetrated to parts of the mountains never deemed accessible before his day.
Women began quite early to have aspirations to get to the top of the mountain. In August, 1823, a Mrs. Campbell of London, with her daughter, got to the Col du Géant and tried to reach the summit but failed. In September, 1838, Mlle. Henriette d’Angeville, no longer young, succeeded. It was then regarded as an extraordinary feat. She says she “looked out toward those superb mountains which lifted above the plains and mediocrities of the earth their brows adorned with an eternal splendor;” she was “attracted by their solitude where she might breathe the free pure air of the mighty Alpestrian Nature;” she was bound to climb “on the white carpet of the spotless snows to those glittering peaks which are like luminous altars, the sojourn of joy, of sweetness, of infinite serenity.” Her relatives and friends tried to restrain her but she cried: “If I suffocate, take my body to the top and leave it there.” She started with seven guides and two porters, and succeeded.
Afterwards she confessed:—“If we had started from the Grands Mulets at four o’clock instead of at two, the ascension would have been a failure and we should have got caught in the tempest; if we had gone back without reaching the summit, they would have made sport of us; if one of my guides had perished I should have been stoned and if I had perished it would have been said: ‘Too bad, but what business had she to get into such a scrape?’”
She has been called “the Bride of Mont Blanc” and it is said of her that “her name shines with fiery brilliancy in the firmament of Alpinism.”
Undoubtedly, if she were living now, she would be the first woman to cross the Alps in an aeroplane, for in 1838 she proposed to go to London to make an ascension in Charles Green’s balloon.
In the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris are three volumes containing fourteen narratives by those travellers who successfully reached the summit between 1786 and 1838, including an account of the supposed discovery of the valley of Chamonix and a history of the Priory, accompanied by a series of pictures, portraits and original letters, collected by Markham Sherwill, who was the first to put an end to the legend of the discovery of the valley by Windham and Pococke.