du Goute, they passed the night in a rude hut,
eight feet by seven, which had been specially prepared for them. M.
Bourrit, as well as his son, was afflicted by the rarified air and could
not eat anything. At six next morning they started again. The route was
dangerous, being over some snow drifts and blocks of ice. After five
hours one of the guides, Pierre Balmat, proposed a halt, whilst he went
on to reconnoitre the condition of the snow. In an hour he returned, and
said that it was in such a treacherous state it would not be advisable
to proceed. So the attempt was abandoned. They regained their cabin in
safety, De Saussure remaining there another night to make scientific
observations, but M. Bourrit, with his son, started off for Bionassay,
not having a fancy for another night at this elevation.

1786.--Pierre Balmat, Marie Couttet, and another guide reached the top
of the Dome du Goute, by the Aiguille of the same name, on the 8th June,
suffering acutely from the rarifaction of the air. Here they fell in
with Francois Paccard and three other guides, who had ascended by La
Cote. Uniting their forces they went onwards and upwards, until they
were brought to a stand by a ridge of ice--the Mauvaise Arete--which
they considered to be inaccessible, and on their return they were nearly
lost in a fearful storm of snow and hail.

"It so happened that one of Paccard's party, named Jacques Balmat, who
appears just at this time not to have been very popular in the valley,
had presented himself without invitation, and followed them against
their will. When they turned to descend, they did not tell this poor man
of their intention. Being on unfriendly terms with them, he had kept
aloof; and whilst stopping to look for some crystals he lost sight of
them, just as the snow began to fall, which rapidly obliterated their
traces. The storm increasing, he resolved to spend the night alone in
the centre of this desert of ice, and at an elevation of 14,000 feet
above the level of the sea! He had no food; he got under the lee of a
rock and formed a kind of niche in the snow; and there, half dead from
cold he passed the long hours of that terrible night. At last morning
broke--the storm had cleared away; and as Balmat endeavoured to move his
limbs he found that his feet had lost all sensation--they were
frost-bitten! Keeping up his courage he spent the day in surveying the
mountain, and he was rewarded: he found that if the crevasses t