POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



861 



in the form of rills, teeth, fissures, and pinna- 

 cles. The travelers frequently broke through 

 as far as their breasts, with an alarmingly 

 rapid diminution of their strength. Reach- 

 ing the summit of the ridge, they found the 

 precipitous walls of a gigantic crater yawn- 

 ing beneath them, with the loftiest elevations 

 in the shape of three pinnacles rising above 

 the ice on its southern brim. These they 

 calmly and systematically climbed one after 

 the other. The central pinnacle reached a 

 height of about 19,700 feet, overtopping the 

 others by 50 or 60 feet. Dr. Meyer was the 

 first to tread this peak, and planted the Ger- 

 man flag upon it, christening it Kaiser Wil- 

 helm's Peak. The diameter of the crater 

 measured about 6,500 feet, and its depth 

 was about 600 feet. In the southern por- 

 tion the walls of lava were of an ash-gray or 

 reddish-brown color, and were free from ice ; 

 in its northern half the ice sloped downward 

 from the upper brim of the crater in terraces, 

 forming blue and white galleries of vary- 

 ing steepness. A rounded cone of eruption, 

 composed of brown ashes and lava, rose in 

 the northern portion of the crater to a height 

 of about 500 feet, which was partly covered 

 by the more than usually thick sheet of ice 

 extending from the northern brim of the 

 crater. The large crater opened westward 

 in a wide cleft, through which the melting 

 water ran off, and the ice lying upon the 

 western part of the crater and the inner 

 walls issued in the form of a glacier. 



Artists in Humble Work. — Among the 

 ancient Greeks and the northern Italians of 

 Renaissance days, says Prof. G. Aitchison, 

 in a lecture on Decoration, beauty was 

 adored. Every man who practiced a craft 

 was as sure of fame, if he followed what we 

 now call a humble one, as if he followed a 

 noble one, provided that the articles he made 

 could be endowed with beauty, and that he 

 possessed a certain high degree of excellence. 

 A carpenter, an armorer, a potter, a gold- 

 smith, a lapidary, or a bronzer, was as cer- 

 tain to be famous as a sculptor, a statuary, 

 a painter, or an architect. "We naturally 

 know less about the ancient Greeks than 

 about the Italians, though, from Socrates 

 being a sculptor, we hear something of the 

 crafts, and we know that Phidias was not 

 only a sculptor and statuary, . . . but worked 



also in ivory and gold. The great Italian 

 artists were almost invariably craftsmen as 

 well ; in fact, had begun as craftsmen and 

 had learned during their apprenticeship pre- 

 cision in the use of tools and in workman- 

 ship as well as precision in drawing and 

 modeling. As a rule, every youth who 

 wanted to be a painter, sculptor, or archi- 

 tect, was apprenticed to a goldsmith. Bru- 

 nelleschi, Michael Angelo, and Benvenuto 

 Cellini were all brought up as goldsmiths ; 

 one became an architect, one a sculptor and 

 painter, and one a statuary and die-sinker ; 

 Ghirlandaio got his name from the golden 

 wreaths he made, and Francia . . . signed 

 his pictures as a goldsmith, while he signed 

 his goldsmith's work as a painter, and, like 

 the French artists of the present day, these 

 artist craftsmen were often excellent shots 

 and swordsmen as well. If he can invest 

 the article he works at with the highest 

 form of beauty, he is just as much an artist 

 as he who paints a picture, models a statue, 

 or designs a building." 



Messrs. Heilprin and Baker's Survey of 

 Mexico. — Prof. Angelo Heilprin and Mr. 

 Frank C. Baker have recently returned from 

 a scientific expedition to Mexico, which they 

 undertook in February, 1890, in connection 

 with the Academy of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia, and are preparing a paper giv- 

 ing the results of their explorations. It is 

 represented that the main purpose of the 

 expedition — the determination of the physi- 

 cal relations of the Gulf border — was suc- 

 cessfully accomplished. The principal vol- 

 canoes — Orizaba, Popocatepetl, and Ixtacci- 

 huatl — were ascended ; and more exact 

 measurements than have been made before 

 gave Orizaba as the highest of the three, at 

 a little less than eighteen thousand feet, in- 

 stead of Popocatepetl. An entirely new view 

 is taken by the explorers of the structure of 

 the great central plateau. Instead of being 

 an integral part of the Cordilleran system 

 or a volcanic output, it is mostly a flooded 

 expanse of lava and ash, which has covered 

 over the Cretaceous system of rocks and 

 mountains that constitute a nucleus to the 

 plateau. Immense deposits of fossiliferous 

 limestone, manifestly a part or continuation 

 of the Cretaceous system of the United 

 States, crop out around the borders of the 



