Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/570

649 anything, a still more ambitious work in two hundred and twenty-four pages, profusely illustrated, and filled with the most interesting and advantageous information. In 1911 this also attained its fifteenth edition. The same scientific spirit that made his earlier books so attractive and reliable is inevitably present even in a popular guide book.

The oncoming of old age did not retire Whymper to a chimney corner. In 1901 he made an exploring expedition in the Great Divide of the Canadian Rockies. He repeated this visit four times, also pushing on to the Selkirk Mountains.

We have no record that he ever undertook a voyage to the Himalayas after his disappointment in 1874. It is significant that his death took place at Chamonix. It may be that, feeling the approach of dissolution, and unwilling to die in his bed, he was about to undertake another ascent of Mont Blanc, "the great White Mountain" of which he never grew tired.

Edward Whymper was not a transcendentalist or an esoteric in mountain climbing. He employed his best descriptive talents and his charming humor of the best British variety in his descriptions; he knew the mountains in their secret moods; but he seldom broke out into poetry. There is no record of revelry by night, or of singing Alpine paeans before breakfast. He seems to have gone about mountain climbing seriously, yet pleasantly withal. No dangers affrighted him, but, on the other hand, he did not seek extraordinary gymnastic feats. It is safe to say that he had ingrained in him true love for the mountains, and a great delight in the views from above the clouds, but he was also imbued with the savage lust of exploration and pioneering.

We may live to see a school of climbers that may accomplish more things than his, but we shall not see one of more heroic spirit.

The world owes him something more than a reputation of an undaunted climber of mountains or a fame that can be assessed in worldly terms. Zermatt owes him a statue, no less than Chamonix owed to De Saussure and Balmat.