Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/667

 like his father, a water-colour artist of considerable ability, and it was to this gift that he owed a commission that proved a turning-point in his life. In 1860 William Longman, of the firm of publishers, an early president of the Alpine Club, needed illustrations of the then little known mountains of Dauphiné for the second series of ‘Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers’ (1862) and young Whymper was sent out to make the sketches. He states (Alpine Journal, v. 161) that he saw in the chance of going to the Alps a step towards training himself for employment in Arctic exploration, an object of his early ambition. In the following year he showed his ability as a mountaineer by climbing Mont Pelvoux (Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers, 2nd series). In the seasons of 1862–5, by a series of brilliant climbs on peaks and passes, he made himself one of the leading figures in the conquest of the Alps. In 1864 he took part in the first ascent of the highest mountain in Dauphiné, the Pointe des Écrins, and of several peaks in the chain of Mont Blanc. In 1865 he climbed the western peak of the Grandes Jorasses and the Aiguille Verte.

Whymper's fixed ambition, however, during this period was to conquer the reputedly inaccessible Matterhorn. In this he had formidable rivals in Prof. Tyndall and the famous Italian guides, the Carrels of Val Tournanche. He made no fewer than seven attempts on the mountain from the Italian side, which were all foiled by the continuous difficulties of the climb or by bad weather. In one of them, while climbing alone, he met with a serious accident. At last, in July 1865, the plan of trying the Zermatt ridge was adopted, and success was gained at the first attempt. But the sequel was a tragedy rarely paralleled in the history of mountaineering. The party, from no fault of Whymper's, was too large and was ill constituted for such an adventure. It consisted of seven persons, Lord Francis Douglas, Charles Hudson, vicar of Skillington, Lincolnshire, his young friend D. Hadow, and Whymper, with the experienced guides Michel Croz of Chamonix and Peter Taugwalder of Zermatt, with the latter's son as porter. Hadow, the youngest member of the party, a lad inexperienced in rock-climbing, fell on the descent, and dragged down with him Douglas, Hudson, and the guide Croz. The rope broke, and Whymper was left, with the Zermatt men, clinging to the mountain side, while his companions disappeared over the precipice. Investigation showed that the rope that broke was a spare piece of inferior quality, which had been improperly used.

This terrible catastrophe gave Whymper a European reputation in connection with the Matterhorn, which was extended and maintained by the volume ‘Scrambles amongst the Alps’ (1871; 2nd edit. same year; 3rd edit. condensed as ‘Ascent of the Matterhorn,’ 1879; 4th edit. 1893, reissued in Nelson's shilling library, 1905), in which he told the story with dramatic skill and emphasis. The Matterhorn disaster terminated Whymper's active career as an Alpine climber, though he often subsequently visited the Alps, and for literary purposes repeated his ascent of the Matterhorn. In 1867 he turned his attention to Greenland with the idea of ascertaining the nature of the interior, and if possible of crossing it. But a second preliminary trip in 1872 convinced him that the task was too great for his private re{{smaller block|[. The literary and scientific results of these journeys were recorded in three entertaining papers in the ‘Alpine Journal’ (vols. v. and vi.), a lecture to the British Association (39th Report, 1869), and a paper by Prof. Heer (Philosophical Transactions, 1869, p. 445) on the fossils, trees, and shrubs collected. The chief practical result was to show that the interior of Greenland was a snowy plateau which could be traversed by sledges, provided the start was made sufficiently early in the year, and thus to pave the way for Nansen's success in 1888.

In 1888 Whymper turned his attention to the Andes of Ecuador. At that date the still unsettled problem of the power of resistance, or adaptation, of the human frame to the atmosphere of high altitudes was being vigorously discussed. Whymper proposed as his main object to make experiments at heights about and over 20,000 feet. The results he obtained, if they did not settle a question complicated by many physical, local, and personal variations, served to advance our knowledge, and have been in important respects confirmed by the experiences of Dr. Longstaff, the Duke of the Abruzzi, and others at still higher elevations between 20,000 and 25,000 feet. For example, it is now admitted that long sojourn under low pressures diminishes the climbers' physical powers rather than trains them, and it is also agreed that Whymper was right in contesting the conclusion of Paul Bert that inhalation of oxygen would prove a convenient remedy, or palliative, in cases of ‘mountain sickness.’