Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/334

350 From childhood, De Saussure had a singularly deep love for mountains, and for wanderings amongst them. He had spent several years in ascending, for the purpose of scientific examinations, the greater number of the most considerable mountain-chains of Europe. But Mont Blanc still stood vailing itself and its Alpine chain in mystery, in defiance of the young mountain-explorer's longings and endeavors.

“It had become with me,” he writes, “a kind of disease. My eyes never beheld this mountain, which can be seen from so many places in our district, without my experiencing a painful feeling.”

At length, after twenty-seven years of longing and fruitless endeavor, Saussure succeeded in August, 1737, in achieving the longed-for ascent, and from the summit, was able to survey the Alpine chain in all directions.

“The arrival on the summit,” he writes, “did not give me, immediately, all the pleasure which might have been expected;—because the length of the struggle, and the sense of the trouble which it had cost me to reach it, seemed, as it were, to have irritated me. And it was with a kind of wrath, that I trampled the snow upon its highest point. Besides, I feared not being able to make the observations which I desired, so greatly was I troubled by the rarity of the atmosphere, and the difficulty I found in breathing, and in working at this height. We all suffered from fever.”

Everything, however, succeeded to Saussure, beyond his expectations, he saw every thing, and was able to