Abstract
ON Tuesday night, at the Royal Institution, Mr. Edward Wymper described his ascents of Chimborazo and Cotopaxi to a distinguished audience. While purely athletic mountaineers had his sympathy in the practice of mountaineering as a sport, Mr. Whymper confessed that his sympathies were much more with those who en.ployed their brains as well as their muscles. His journey to the Andes was to be one of work, and all its arrangements were devised so as to economise time to the uttermost. In observations for altitudes and position, in studying the manners and customs of the country, in photography and sketching, in the collection of objects of interest, frcm beetles on the summits of mountains to antiquities buried in the ground, he found quite sufficient to occupy his time. From Bodegas the party was composed of two Swiss mountaineers, the cousins Carrel of Val Tournanche, Mr. Perring, some muleteers, and their teams. When they reached the summit of Chimborazo, on the 3rd of January, after a most arduous climb, they found the wind blowing at the rate of 50 miles an hour, from the north-east, and driving the snow before it. With extreme difficulty, a reading of the mercurial barometer was effected. The mercury fell to 14.1 inches with a temperature of 21 deg. Fahr. This being worked out, in comparison with a nearly simultaneous observation at Guayaquil, gave 20,545 feet for tne height of Chimborazo. They began the descent at 20 minutes past 5, with scarcely an hour and a quarter of daylight, and reached their camp (about 17,400 feet above the sea-level) about 9 p.m., having been out nearly sixteen hours, and on foot the whole time. Passing from an extinct to an active volcano, Mr. Wymper next gave an account of his journey to the crater of Cotopaxi. Observing with the telescope, during an enforced stay at Machachi, that much less smoke or vapour was given off at night than by day, he resolved, if possible, to pass a night on the summit. On the 18th of February the party got to the edge of the crater, having passed almost the whole way from their camp at a height of 15,000 feet to the foot of the final cone over snow, and then over ash mixed with ice. The final cone was the steepest part of the ascent, and on their side presented an angle of 36 deg. When they reached the crater vast quantities of smoke and vapour were boiling up, and they could only see portions of the opposite side at intervals, and the bottom not at all. Their tent was pitched 250 feet from the edge of the crater, and during a violent squall the india-rubber floor of the tent was found to be on the point of melting, a maximum thermometer showing a temperature of 110 deg. on one side of the tent and of but 50 deg, on the other; in the middle it was 72.5 deg. Outside it was intensely cold, and a thermometer on the tent cord showed a minimum of 13 deg. At night they had a fine view of the crater, which has a diameter from north to south of 2000 feet, and from east to west of about 1500 feet. In the interior the walls descend to the bottom in a series of steps of precipice, and slope a good thousand feet, and at the bottom there was a nearly circular spot of glowing fire, 200 feet in diameter. On the sides of the interior higher up, fissures, from which flickering flames were leaping, showed that the lava was red hot a very short distance below the surface. The height he found to be 19,600 feet. The party remained at the top for twenty-six consecutive hours, sleeping about 130 feet below the loftiest point. At first they had felt the effects of the low pressure of the atmosphere, and again, as at Chimborazo, took chlorate of potash with good effect. All signs of mountain sickness had passed away before they commenced the descent, and did not recur during the journey. Nearly five months later Mr. Whymper returnedrto Chimborazo, and from a second reading of the barometer at 14.028 inches, with a temperature of 15 deg. Fahrenheit, he made the height 20,489 feet, the mean of the two readings giving 20,517 feet. While on the side of Chimborazo he witnessed a magnificent eruption of Cotopaxi, ashes rising in a column 20,000 feet above the rim of the crater and then spreading over an area of many miles. Prof. Bonney had submitted the ash to microscopic examination, and found that the fineness varied from 4000 to 25,000 particles to the grain in weight, and from observation of the area over which the ash fell Mr. Whymper calculated that at least two million tons must have been ejected in this one eruption.
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Geographical Notes . Nature 23, 323–324 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/023323a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/023323a0