On Tuesday night, Mr. Whymper gave at the Royal Institu-
tion a very amusing account of his ascent of Chimborazo and Cotopaxi. At the top of Chimborazo his party found the wind blowing at the rate of fifty miles an hour from the north-east and driving the snow before it. The barometer had fallen to 14 deg., and the temperature to 21 deg. Fahrenheit. This gave the height of Chimborazo as 20,545 ft., and a second ascent gave him 20,489 ft., so that he regards the true height as probably the mean between these, i.e., 20,517 ft. On Cotopaxi, which is still an active volcano, the height of which Mr. Whymper determined as 19,600 ft., Mr. Whymper remained for thirty-six conse- cutive hours. The heat of the part of the mountain sepa- rated by but a thin stratum from the volcano was so great, that the indiarubber of their tent-floor was at one point found to be all but melting at 110 deg., and yet outside the tent, and at a distance from the ground, a thermometer on the cord sank as low as 13 deg. While on Chimborazo, Mr. Whymper saw a magnificent eruption of Cotopaxi, the column of ashes rising to a height of 20,000 ft. above the crater, that is, in other words, raising up a mountain of ash as high as itself above its own head. This column of ash afterwards spread itself over an area of many miles. The spectacle of this inverted shadow of the mountain expelled from its own in- terior, and towering up into the sky above it, must have been singularly impressive,--a mountain-birth such as might have made the travellers tremble lest Cotopaxi itself should collapse. like an eggshell, with all its substance gone.
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