Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/568

564 he turned to the Republic of Ecuador, the most lofty country which remained accessible.

Since his achievements in the Alps he had turned more and more toward the scientific side of mountaineering. The main objects of his South American journey were to observe the effects on the human body of low pressure and to attain the greatest possible height in order to experience it; to determine the relative altitudes and positions of the chief mountains of Ecuador; to make comparison of boiling-point observations and of the aneroid barometer against the mercurial barometer; and to make collections in botany, zoology and geology at great heights. He concerned himself neither with commerce nor politics, nor with the natives and their curious ways, except incidentally.

He had not the means to project a great scientific expedition; his staff was modest, consisting of his old Alpine guide, Jean-Antoine Carrel; a cousin, Louis Carrel, with a third man picked up in Ecuador. Landing at Guayaquil on December 9, 1879, he proceeded at once up the Guayas River to Bodegas, and thence to the plateaus of the great extinct volcano Chimborazo. After a careful examination of the mountain—referring to the accounts of Humboldt in 1802 and Boussingault in 1831, from which he did not, after all, receive much aid—he attacked the mountain on December 27. On December 28 he and his two European guides were stricken with mountain-sickness for the first time, with intense headache, feverishness and disturbance of respiration. Fighting this off and triumphing over constant delays due to inefficient help, he finally reached the top of Chimborazo on January 4, 1880. On this ascent he took constant readings of the barometer and thermometer, and of the variations of the weather. He fixed the height of the summit at 20,545 feet. This is all set forth in the most interesting fashion in his "Travels Amongst the Great Andes of the Equator," New York, 1892.

Whymper met few of the greater perils of mountain-climbing in Ecuador that he had suffered in the Alps. He suffered more from annoyances, such as snow-blindness, frost-bites, inefficiency and thievery on the part of the natives, almost incredible sanitary conditions in the inns and tambos. All his party developed complaints of one kind and another.

From Chimborazo he went on to the conquest of Corazon, Cotopaxi—where he spent the night on the cinder cone in the very edge of the crater—Illiniza, Sincholagua, Antisana, Cayambe, Sara-Urea and others. His description of the sojourn on Cotopaxi makes thrilling reading. His own beautiful engravings add great interest to this account.

Whymper enjoyed adventures when they came, but above all he