Obituary — Edward Whymper. 527 



During thesey ears of Scrambles amongst the Alps Mr. Whymper paid 

 two visits to Greenland, in 1867 and again in 1872. No Alpine peaks 

 tempted him there, but at the instance of Mr. R. H. Scott, F.R.S., 

 aud entrusted with a grant from the British Association, he undertook 

 to explore the Tertiary Leaf-beds and Coal-seams at Atanekerdluk, 

 North Greenland, and he not only made sketches and photographs 

 of the cliffs, but brought home a large collection of plant-remains, 

 which was afterwards described by Professor Oswald Heer, of 

 Zurich, 1 a part of that collection, and also the result of his later 

 visit in 1872, being preserved in the Geological Department of the 

 British Museum. 2 



But the achievement which brought him distinction as an explorer 

 and gained for him the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical 

 Society was an expedition in 1879-80 to Ecuador, where he made 

 important ascents and investigations among the Great Andes of the 

 Equator. Early in January, 1880, he attained the summit of 

 Chimborazo, 20,498 feet, this being the highest climb hitherto 

 placed to the credit of any mountaineer. He was accompanied by 

 two Piedmontese guides, and camps were established at heights of 

 14,375 feet, 16,624 feet, and 17,285 feet. One of the guides was 

 badly frostbitten, and all the members of the party suffered much 

 inconvenience from mountain sickness. When, however, a second 

 ascent of Chimborazo was successfully accomplished six months later 

 no ill effects were felt from this cause. Nor were the climbers 

 affected by mountain sickness when they scaled the volcano Cotopaxi, 

 19,613 feet high, though Mr. Whymper stayed for twenty-six hours 

 near the crater in order to experience in his own person the action of 

 the rarefied atmosphere on the human system. In this case, however, 

 he and the guides were not weakened by having to contend against 

 snow and frost, the ground on which they camped at the summit being 

 so hot as almost to melt the indiarubber covering of their tent. The 

 results of these researches were published in Travels amongst the Great 

 Andes of the Equator (3 vols., 1891-2). 



Climbers among the Alps in later years will remember Mr. Whymper 

 by his two guide-books to Chamonix and Mont Blanc, the former of 

 which reached this year its sixteenth edition and the latter its fifteenth 

 edition. 



Eor years he was well known at home as a lecturer on Alpine 

 subjects, but even so lately as 1901-5 he explored and ascended the 

 mountains of the ' Great Divide ', the water-parting of the Rockies, 

 where the primitive sources of the mountain streams separate, the 

 western to join the Columbia River and the Eraser, and so ultimately 

 reaching the Pacific, while the eastern add their contributions to the 

 Bow River, which finallj 7 empties into Hudson's Bay. Here on 

 Mount Eield (5,000 feet) on the right bank, and Mount Stephen 

 (8,000 feet) on the left bank, Mr. Whymper found Trilobites in the 



1 See Oswald Heer, " Contributions to the Fossil Flora of North Greenland, 

 being a description of the plants collected by Mr. Edward Whymper during 

 the summer of 1867 " : Phil. Trans. Koy. Soc, vol. clix, pt. ii, p. 445, 1870. 



2 See also Professor Nordenskiold's "Expedition to Greenland": Geol. 

 Mag., Vol. IX, p. 419, 1872. 



