AN ACCOUNT OF TWO RECENT AT

TEMPTS TO ASCEND MONT BLANC,
BY DR HAMEL, COUNSELLOR OF
STATE TO THE EMPEROR OF ALL

THE RUSSIAS.

(From the Bibliotheque Universelle of August 1820.)

FROM the first period of my acquaintance with the journeys and the labours of the celebrated Saussure of Geneva, I have always felt a strong inclination to visit the valley of Chamouny, and, above all, to see Mont Blanc, that king of mountains, conquered by the perseverance of this indefatigable investigator of nature. At last, in the present year, I had an op; portunity of being at Chamouny, and of admiring the wonders of this country. I have seen the whole chain of mountains which surround it; I have visited the rivers of ice which descend from the eternal snows in which they are again immersed; and often I fixed my eyes upon the most elevated point of Europe, without daring, so many difficulties presented themselves, to form an idea of ascending to its summit. However, having had occasion to pass by the baths of St Gervais, I learned that two people of the country had succeeded in reaching the top of Mont Blanc, and descended the same day to Prarion, the place of their departure. This report inspired me with the desire of attempting this new route, which, according to the assertion of these people, was easier, less dangerous, and much shorter than that of Chamouny, which had always been followed since the time of Saus

sure.

As the same persons had formed the design of ascending a second time to the summit of Mont Blanc, for the purpose of dissipating doubts which had been raised at Chamouny, of the possibility of getting to the top by the way of St Gervais, I profited by this favourable opportunity of ascending at the same time. The Cures of St

Gervais and St Nicolas de Verosse offered to accompany me; and the better to succeed, we proposed to divide the ascent into two days, passing the night near the Pierre-Ronde. †

Prarion is the mountain which separates the valley of Chamouny from that of Mont-Joie, where the Gervais is situated.

A name applied to the rocks situated under the point called the Needle of Gouté.

VOL. VII.

We arrived there on the 3d of August, the anniversary of the ascension of Saussure, passing by the villages of Bionnay and Bionnassay, the hill or rather the plain of Lacha, and going along the side of Mont-de-Lar. We stopped at Pierre-Ronde at half-past seven, not far from a torrent which descends from the glacier of Bionnassay, to pass the night under the shelter of some rocks. The night was uncommonly fine; and next morning, at half-past two, we again began our march, by moonlight, traversing an acclivity of ice till we came to TêteRousse. About a quarter before five o'clock, the sun began to illuminate successively the peaks of the mountains on the side of Sallenches, whilst their bases were yet in darkness. The effect of this partial illumination was very fine. To us, placed in obscurity, it seemed as if a number of torches had been lighted, one after another, below us.

From the pinnacles of Tête-Rousse, called by Saussure the bases of the Needle of Gouté, † we directed our course towards this point itself, at the foot of which we arrived twenty-two minutes past five; but to gain the ridge by which it was attainable, we had to traverse in a horizontal line, and by notches cut in the ice by an axe, a slope of ice of from 45° to 50°, which proved extremely difficult. After about three hours painful walking among loose stones, we reached the summit of the needle at the height of 1980 toises, ten minutes before nine o'clock. Here we rested for a little ; and after having taken every precaution against the cold, and the rays of the sun reflected by the snow, we began our march towards the Dôme du Gouté at half-past nine, and at halfpast eleven we arrived at its top. Professor Pictet of Geneva, who was this day at Chamouny with Miss Edgeworth and other friends, observed us with his telescope from the Croix de Fleigère, and traced us through part of this route.

A name given to rocks situated higher up than those of Pierre-Ronde.

+ See Voyages dans les Alps, § 1114. A mountain to the N. W. of Mont Blanc, and of the Dome du Gouté is thus named. Its face is precipitous almost to the peak, and broken by chasms covered by ice, called couloirs.

Tt

330

Mont Blanc.

It was in this two hours' march that I first felt the effect of rarefied air on my strength. It was absolutely impossible for me to walk more than forty paces, without stopping about two minutes to take breath; and, arrived at the summit of the Dôme, (2200 toises,)* I felt myself so exhausted, that half-an-hour's repose at least was necessary to enable me to continue the ascent to the top of Mont Blanc.. I found, besides, on making the calculation, that it would be impossible to reach the summit, and descend again to the Needle of Gouté before night; and I therefore A mist which resolved to return. had formed around the top contributed to fix me in this determination. The rest of the party were also obliged to renounce their first intention, and we all returned together. Having taken a rest at the edge of the Needle of Gouté, we began, about halfpast two, to descend. The descent was infinitely more painful and dangerous than it had been on our way up, on account of the thawing of the ice, which in the morning had contributed to consolidate the detached stones, that now gave way continually under our feet. The ridges of the Needle are in some parts almost perpendicular, and if we had made a false step, we should have rolled down to the glacier of Bionnassay. To give an idea of the danger in which we were, it may only be remarked, that one of our guides wept like a child when we began our descent. No accident, however, occurred, although the stones, at every instant, receded from our feet. Over the slope of ice and snow which we had traversed in the morning, the stones which were loosened from above rolled with such rapidity, that they occasioned a whistling in the air; and we preferred to descend, although with much difficulty, towards the glacier of Bionnassay, upon the snow of which we slid

I did not take the height of the Dome myself. I had a new portable barometer, made at Geneva, but the reservoir was too little to hold all the mercury which descended from the tube at this height. This remark should teach the makers of these instruments to try them always under the receiver of an air pump, to ascertain that the mercury comes down as low at least as the scale.

down to very near the place where we
had slept the preceding evening. We
arrived at the Pavillon de Bellevue,
by our former road, about nine o'clock.

My journey convinced me of the
falsity of the assertion, that we could
go from Prarion to the summit, and
return the same day; for although I
had slept at Pierre-Ronde, at the
height of about 1420 toises, I was not
able to accomplish it, and the guides
said I had walked uncommonly well.
The proprietor of a little house, a
kind of inn, situated upon the moun-
tain of Chaletta, between Mont Lacha
and Mont Prarion, and called Pavillon
de Bellevue, had thus very impro-
perly invited travellers to take this
route, in announcing to them by a
printed notice, that many strangers
had followed it with success. My
guides assured me that no traveller
had yet been so far as myself. I have
reason to believe, however, that the
two excellent guides who accompanied
me, Jean François Perroud, and Mau-
rice Mollard, have reached the sum-
mit and returned the same day; but
I am sure that no stranger, unaccus-
tomed to climb mountains, would be
able to do so.

In turning over the works of M. de Saussure, I find that he had, in 1785, attempted the same route; but the dangers which he met with in the ridge of the Needle of Gouté hindered him from going further; he did not even go the length of its summit, (see his Travels, 1117.) This led me to believe that the road of Chamouny, by which he ascended, though not so direct, was at the least more commodious; and I was anxious to find an occasion to try it, that I might be able to decide which of the two roads merited the preference.

Soon after, I learned that some gentlemen of Geneva had also expressed a wish to go to the summit of Mont Blanc. One of these was M. Selligue, mineralogist and instrument-maker, who informed me that he had invented a barometer on a new principle, which he wished to try in these moun

tains.

As the claim of Mont Blanc to be the highest mountain in Europe has been recently disputed, and as, since

ses.

I have found its height to be 998 tei

Two English gentlemen, Mr Joseph Dornford and Mr Gilbert Henderson, both from the University of Oxford, the first of whom had, in England, formed the project of ascending Mont Blanc, were eager to` . join us, and we departed from Geneva on the 16th of August, at three o'clock P. M. for Chamouny, where we arrived the next day, at two, at the Union Hotel, kept by M. Charlet; (bar. 95. ther. 19° R.) We consulted afterwards with Joseph-Marie Coutet, and Mathieu, sons of Pierre Balmat, whom M. Pictet had recommended to us as guides, equally robust and trustworthy. They advised us to take twelve guides, viz. three for each tra

332

out.

Mont Blanc.

veller. We entrusted the choice of
these to themselves; and our obliging
hostess hastened to prepare every thing
that was necessary in the shape of pro-
visions for the expedition. The next
day, at a quarter past 5 A. M. we set
The morning was delightful,
and the thermometer at 10° R. We
took, at first, the direction of the gla-
cier of Bossons, but, before coming to
it, we diverged to the left, and began
the ascent in a forest. At seven o'-
clock we
were already above this
forest, at the cottage inhabited by
Pierre François Favret, formerly
one of the guides of M. de Saussure,
who had made the ascent, and of whom
the son was with us. Here one of our
guides, Julien Devouassou, son-in-law
of Dr Paccard, had nearly poisoned
himself. He had bought at Cha-
mouny what he conceived was syrup
of vinegar, and, arriving at a rivulet,
he wished to try his syrup before mix
ing it with water. He swallowed a
little. It was concentrated sulphuric
acid, which burned his mouth and
His
stomach in a dreadful manner.
sufferings were great, and he vomited
much. By good luck this accident
happened near the cottage, where I
found ashes, which I made him swal-
low, diluted with water. The alkali
instantly neutralized the acid, and the
guide was soon in a state to continue
his march with us.

From the cottage we mounted in a
zig-zag direction towards the South
Needle. At half-past eight we rested
at Pierre-pointue, where the moun-
tain projects between the glacier of
Bossons and that of Pélerins, but near-
From
er the first; (therm. 13.)
this place we saw, for the first time,
the top of Mont Blanc, and we were
yet in sight of the Priory. From thence
we turned a little towards the right,
and, at nine o'clock, crossed the tor-
rent called the Black Water, but
which, in place of water, was filled
with enormous blocks of granite, which
had rolled down from above. On the
left was the pinnacle of La Tour. A
quarter of an hour afterwards we pass
ed Nant Blanc; and at a quarter be-
fore ten we sat down to breakfast a-
round a large stone between the gla-
cier of Bossons and Mont Rasselache.
The guides called it the Ladder-stone,
because they ordinarily leave here the
ladder which is used in crossing the
glacier. (Barom. 21.1,7-therm. at-

tach. 129-the other 15°.) At ten
minutes past eleven we again began
our march, and in five minutes at-
tained the glacier of Bossons, which
we had to traverse obliquely, in the
direction of the Grand-Mulet. About
a hundred paces from the edge of the
glacier, we met with scenery which no
pen is able to describe. We stopped
every moment to remark some strik-
"Look to
ing configuration of the ice, and the
only words uttered were,
the right! Look to the left!" Some-
times it was a precipice of which no
eye could trace the bottom-some-
times a mass of ice more than a hun-
dred feet in height. Soon, however,
the ladder was put in use; and the
question was, How should we be able
to cross a gulf of twenty feet in breadth,
with no visible bottom, divided length-
wise in two by a slender partition of
ice, of at most a foot in thickness, and
of which the upper edge was ten feet
lower than the margin of the two hol-
lows thus united? Arrived at the
edge, the ladder was let down, its
end resting on the slender wall ́iso-
lated in the middle of the abyss. One
of the guides descended, and one of
the party followed him, and, standing
by the side of the ladder upon the
wall of ice of a foot in breadth, he re-
mained motionless, leaning upon his
stick, and endeavouring to avoid the
sight of the two blue gulfs ready to
swallow him up on the least loss of
equilibrium. The guide now turned
the ladder to the opposite side of the
ravine, and, the traveller having a-
scended, he turned it again as before,
for the second of the party to pass,
and so on with the others. When the
ladder is a few inches longer than the
breadth of the chasm, it is laid across
in the form of a bridge, and each
crawls over on all-fours. Other chasms
are also met with, which are connect-
ed by bridges of snow, of no great
thickness.

Sometimes those in the rear of a party find these bridges pierced by the footsteps of the person who has preceded them; in this case, it is proper to diverge a little to one side.

In spite of all these difficulties and dangers, we crossed the glacier without the slightest accident. At a quarter past one we were above the junc tion of the glacier of Bossons with that of Tacconay, between which is the mountain of Cote, and, after having