Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/335

Rh make all the observations which he had so long, and so ardently desired to do.

“I scarcely believed my own eyes,” he says; “I seemed to myself to be dreaming, when I saw beneath my feet the terrific, majestic peaks, the acute summits of Midi, Argentiere, and Le Geant, the very bases of which it had been to me so difficult and hazardous to climb. I understood their connection and their form, and at one single glance was able to clear up the uncertainty which years of labor alone could not have done.”

Amongst the lesser observations which De Saussure made on the ascent, the following have interested me. “We saw,” says he, “near the summit, only two butterflies; the one was a little gray night-butterfly (phaline), which flew across the first snow; the second, a day-butterfly, which appeared to me to be le myrtil. The flower, belonging to the perfect class, which I found at the greatest altitude, was a silene acaulis. Small mosses were, however, growing upon the very highest rocks.”

Saussure, when in shadow, saw from the summit of Mont Blanc, the stars in the light of day; and the color of the sky was almost black.

He was able only to remain four hours and a half on the summit of the mountain, when he was obliged return. But in the stillness of the night, when he recalled all that he had actually seen, and felt the grand picture of the mountains clearly imprinted upon his brain, then he experienced an unmingled satisfaction. And well, indeed, might he! He had