The guides told me that many accidents had happened and much injury been occasioned to travellers by the tricks of frolicsome and imprudent people, who frequently set the stones rolling down hill for their own amusement. These are always the travellers themselves, for the natives are too well acquainted with the dangerous nature of such sport to allow themselves to practise it.
On our way homeward we went to see the little town of Torre del Greco, which stands at some distance up the mountain. In the neighborhood are immense fields of lava and every mark of the fearful ravages of the volcano. Whenever a great eruption takes place, this town is almost sure to suffer. Earthquakes shake it, ashes and cinders overwhelm it, and rivers of burning lava scorch its fields and sweep away its houses. How many times it has been destroyed I do not remember; but the inhabitants always go back and rebuild it when the lava cools. They live a strange life, constantly in the jaws of destruction; yet the vicinity of so much danger gives them no more concern, on common occasions, than the dangers of the sea cause to a sailor. When the mountain shakes and bellows, and the flames begin to issue from the top, they prepare for a start; but it is not till the streams of lava pour down upon the back of the town, that they consider it time to run. Then they snatch up their bundles and scamper for life. It is remarkable that the only powder magazine about Naples used to be here, and, for aught I know, may be so still!
Herschel’s Telescope.
Herschel the Astronomer.
Sir William Herschel was born at Hanover, in Germany, in 1738. At the age of fourteen he entered the Hanoverian Guards, as a musician, and in 1757, proceeded to England in that capacity. Here he became a teacher of music. In 1770, he began to devote himself to the study of astronomy. In 1781, he discovered the planet now called Herschel, but which he called Georgium sidus, or George’s star, in compliment to George III., then king of England. In 1787, he completed his great telescope, the tube of which was forty feet in length, and which was surrounded with machines for turning it in all directions. When observing a heavenly body, he sat at the top of the tube, and looked down to the bottom, where, in a measure, he saw the reflection of the object he wished to notice. In 1789, he discovered the sixth and seventh moons of Saturn. He died in 1822, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. His son is now one of the most famous of living astronomers.
PETER PARLEY’S NEW STORIES.
No. III.
Truth and Falsehood—an Allegory.
In ancient days, there lived in Damascus, a city of Syria, a youth whose name was Myron. His father, who was very rich, died suddenly, leaving him a vast estate. He had a great deal of money, and a beautiful house, to which a fine garden was attached. One day he was walking in this garden, and the air being warm and pleasant, he sat down by a fountain, sheltered from the sun by the overhanging branches of the cedar trees. The scene was tranquil and soothing, and such was its effect upon Myron, that he fell into a dream or reverie, in which the following events seemed actually to come to pass.