Punch: Punch (78.1880)

238

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[May 22, 1880.

EXCELSIOR, EXCELS I S31 IVi US.

R. WHYMPER
ought to change
his name from
WlITMPEK to
Crow, and take
for his crest a
Chanticleer,
struttant, chant-
ant, on a moun-
tain reduced to
a mole-hill.

There is no
earthly emin-
ence, good or bad,
over which the
great Whymper
is not, already,
or does not mean,
shortly to be,
entitled to crow,
as its conqueror,
climber, and
chawer-up. He
has long ago
“polished off”
the Alps, to use
his own appro-
priate phrase, as
a _ brigade-hoy
polishes off a
biggish pair of |
high-lows. The
highest moun-
tain is indeed a
high-low to him.
He thinks no-
thing of taking
down a dozen
aiguilles in as
many mornings,
like the famous
sailor who used
to swallow pock-
et-knives. He
has done brown
— for all their
perpetual snows
— Mont Blanc,
Monte Rosa, the
Jung-Frau, and
the Matterhorn,
till these wretch-
ed monarchs of
mountains, as
they once called
themselves, are
reduced to the
smallest pota-
toes, and crouch
in whimpering
submission at
their conqueror’s
feet, as the lions
used at Van Am-
burgh’s. He
has “polished

off” the Caucasus, and looked down on the rocky bed on wfiich Prometheus suffered all the
tortures of liver-complaint. He keeps the Himalayas we understand in reserve, as a
monkey keeps a big nut in his pouch, “when mouthed, to be last swallowed.”

It is, probably, to get his head, legs, and breathing apparatus in order for Dawalajeri,
that he has been lately flooring the Andes, “polishing off” Chimborazo, Corazon, Sincho-
lagna, and Antisana, and showing us where to spend a happy day, by passing twenty-six
hours a-top of Cotopaxi, 19,500 feet above sea-level. He is now, by last advices per Tuckett,
—who plays the part of trumpeter assigned him by Shakspeark, “It is my Lord, I hear
his Tuckett,”—on his way to Cayambe, the mountain under the Equator—who must, there-
fore, one would think, be keeping up his perpetual snow under difficulties unknown to more
northern mountains—to polish off, en passant, Saranen and Cotocachi. The latter, he drops
out incidentally, is the volcano which destroyed Ibarra some years ago, (“ but needn’t flatter
himself he is going to destroy me”) and is reputed to be 16,300 feet high, (“ till I take him
down, and put him under his own feet and mine, in the boiling of a thermometer ! ”)

This reducer of bad eminences, this active swallower of active volcanoes, this defier of
the highest high-lines of fire and snow, as he has got into the habit of climbing heights
impossible to ordinary man, has taught himself to live at them, and breathes the difficult

air of the mountain-top as comfortably as
the Fire-King, Chabert, breathed the
breath of the seven-times-heated furnace.

His only bother is that the toes of his
Swiss-guides—the molly-coddles l—will get
frost-bitten on Chimborazo, at 19,600 feet,,
and that the South Americans—lazy beg-
gars !—won’t follow in his footsteps, and.
get up their native mountains as he does.
To be sure the miserable wretches have one
excuse for not rising to the height of their
situation. You can’t see anything either
at the top or bottom of these South-
American ranges, for, as Whymper com-
plains, it is thick fog every day and all day-
long in Ecuador, except for one hour from
six to seven a.at. And even Whymper,,
extraordinary getter-up as he is, can’t
always insure even his own getting-up, say
20.000 feet, by that unearthly hour.

If ever a Gentleman was entitled to ad-
vertise himself as “in the perpetual snow
lino,” Whymper is the man, a self, with
no company.

We propose that the empire he has so
proudly asserted over the old-established
inaccessibilities of the world, should be
recognised as a higher form of Imperialism
—Whymperialism; that his prowess should
be honoured by a Victoria Cross of his own,
of iron with sky-blue points and a line of
perpetual snow frozen into them; and a
coat of arms found for him, with two ice-
axes, borne saltire-wise, in chief, over a
mountain bowing its head, diminished, and
the motto “ Sich a Gettin’ up Stairs,” or, if
that be thought disrespectful in the ver-
nacular, its statelier Latin equivalents
“ Excelsior! ”

THE LETTER OF LETTERS.

Such R., the First of the famous Three,,
seems destined to become. The Hew Educa-
tional Code not only authorises, but pro-
poses to encourage Masters of Elementary
Schools, by pecuniary rewards, to teach,
in the form of Reading lessons, Geo-
graphy, Natural History, Physical Geo-
graphy, Natural Philosophy, History, and
Social Economy, besides an indefinite num-
ber of subjects under the head of “Etc.”
Not only the “Three R.’s,” but as many
more letters as you please, are included
within the single “ R. ” of “ Reading.”'
The abbreviation, “Etc.,” clearly compre-
hends every letter in the Alphabet that can
stand as an initial for any branch of human
learning. The book to be read for exercise
in “ R.” must be an Encyclopaedia treating
de rebus omnibus etforsan quibusdam aliis ;
“R.” corresponding to Rebus. What “R.,”
the Ratepayer will say to this “R.” for
“ Reading,” and to “R.” for the Regula-
tion requiring him to supply “R.,” the
“ Ready ” to pay for it, remains to be seen.
Perhaps another “R.” for some illiberal
individuals crying, “Rot!” or “Rubbish!”

Cook—Christian and Conservative,

That Bridport is one of the few homes
of True Blue principle, its choice of a re-
presentative at the late Election _ shows.
AVhat a fine sense of the connection be-
tween Christianity and Conservatism, and
of the comfort to be anticipated from a
union of the two in Kitchen as well as in
Hall, in that advanced locality, is indi-
cated in the following advertisement ex-
tracted from the Bridport News .—

WANTED, for the Country, a good COOK,
a Christian Conservative Widow, aged
forty. An abstainer preferred.—Address, &e.