Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 Part 4

It proved that the dear little enthusiast had been, a few days previous, on a visit to the Island of Capri to see the famous Blue Grotto; since which she had been startling people with her descriptions of blue folks and a silver man.

Seeing that I couldn't have a better guide than Miss Bertha, the next morning we and a jovial party went on board of the tiny steamer that plies between Naples and the eighteen miles distant Island of Capri, hollowed under the cliffs of which the Blue Grotto is situated. The Bay of Naples, you know, is called the most beautiful in the world, and a sail across it is a lovely thing in itself. There are such glorious blue skies overhead, and such clear blue waters underneath, that the steamer appears to bear one through the air between two skies. Then, close to Naples, is seen that wonderful volcano, Vesuvius, with always a cloud of smoke curling lazily out of its crater. And, besides, the white houses of Naples are so built on a hill-side, the streets climbing to the top, that a few miles away that too is a handsome sight. Miss Bertha told me that they were the marble steps to the giant's palace, whose bird was carrying us to the enchanted island to show us the giant's jewel-room.

Capri then looked like a distant light-house, merely a brown rock rising out of the sea.

As we went bobbing over the waves it grew higher and higher, which Miss Bertha explained was the correct thing for it to do, until, when the steamer anch.o.r.ed a little distance from its cliffs, it rose straight up from the water to a dizzy height. A flock of little skiffs crowded around the steamer for the pa.s.sengers, and Miss Bertha, taking charge of me, led me into one.

"But the Grotto, where is it?" I asked, staring at the huge cliffs, straight at which our red-sashed boatman was rowing us as if to destruction.

Skiff after skiff ahead of us was seen to be swallowed up in the cliffs in the most amazing way, and not an opening in the rocky wall to be seen. "You mustn't be afraid," said my sweet little guide, a.s.suringly: "it won't hurt;" and she gave me her hand, that--perhaps I shouldn't tell--trembled a little, and directly its mate stole into my grasp.

"Lie low down," said our boatman, when the skiff was within a few feet of apparently smashing against the cliff.

"And shut your eyes tight," said Miss Bertha, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her eyes so tight that she showed all of her pretty white teeth in the funniest way.

The skiff scratched and b.u.mped on the rocks a few times, and then floated clear.

The bright sky was gone, the gulls flying about the cliffs were gone, the steamer was gone, and the cliffs themselves were gone: we had slipped under them, through a tiny opening, and were in the Blue Grotto.

The blue roof rose high above us, and there was ample room within the Grotto for many times the numerous blue skiffs filled with blue-haired blue people, all dressed in blue clothes, and breathing blue air. That is just the way we appeared. The water was lighter-colored than the air, and when a boatman jumped overboard, his every action being distinctly seen, he seemed to be flying in air, and not diving in water. It gave one a weird crawly feeling to see him, and when he came to the surface it seemed to be the most natural thing for him to tumble back to us after capering around in the sky. Then he crawled out on a rock to allow the water to drain off his clothes, and then it was that Miss Bertha's promise of a silver man was made good. He stood there a moment, appearing like a burnished silver statue, and the trickling drops as they fell from him sparkled with silvery glitter.

An oar splashed in the water sent the drops flying into the blue air, to glimmer there in silver brightness a moment, like a patch of the starry Milky Way on a frosty night.

"Isn't it lovely!" said Bertha, clapping her hands joyfully; "and you can get a whole handful of silver by just reaching for it, but you can't keep it." She grasped the blue water as she spoke, and it escaped through her fingers in glittering drops, as if a handful of coins was melting in her palm. Whatever is held in the water a.s.sumes, for the time, this silver-color, and the blades of the oars shone as though the Capri boatmen were so rich that they had made them of pure silver.

For hundreds of years the Grotto was known to exist somewhere under the cliffs of the island, but so small is the entrance that it was not rediscovered until this century. It can not be entered except the sea around the island is very calm; and as all the beautiful effects are due to the refraction of light, the bright mid-day sun should be shining without.

THE ALBATROSS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SKIMMER OF THE SOUTHERN SEAS.]

Far away in the desolate South Seas there lives a large and beautiful bird called the albatross, the giant member of the petrel family. The wandering albatross (_Diomedea exulans_) is the largest of its tribe.

Specimens have been captured measuring four feet in length, and with an expanse of wing from ten to fourteen feet. The body of this bird is very large, its neck is short and stout, and its head is armed with a powerful hooked beak from six to eight inches long. It is snowy, glistening white, its long wing-feathers tipped with black.

Its mighty strength of wing renders it the admiration of all navigators, who fitly name it the lord of the stormy seas. In the desolate regions where it lives the sailors hail its appearance with delight, as it comes sailing around the ship with majestic, careless flight, rising, sinking, now swooping down to seize some cast-off mouthful of food, now poising high above the mast-head, moving with the ship at the most rapid speed, and yet with scarcely a perceptible movement of its gigantic wings.

In storm or calm the albatross is master of the wind and waves. Sailors, straining every nerve to guide the laboring, struggling ship through tempestuous seas, look up, and see far above their heads the albatross calmly breasting the gale, its majesty unruffled, and its great out-stretched wings as motionless as on a still, sunny day. Its strength of flight is marvellous, and is said to be superior to that of any other bird. Sailors have captured these royal inhabitants of southern polar regions, and marked their glistening b.r.e.a.s.t.s with spots of tar, that they might distinguish them and determine their power of endurance; and in several instances the same bird has followed a ship under full sail, before the wind, for seven days and longer, circling round and round, and apparently taking no rest, its sharp eye always watchful for any refuse of food cast overboard by the sailors.

The albatross is very voracious, and easily caught, as it is neither cunning nor shy. As it lives in desolation, and has little to do with men, it knows nothing of trickery, nor dreams of the plots laid against its royal freedom. An interesting account is given of the capture of an albatross by an officer of a French ship. It was a sunny, windy day, and the vessel was speeding along near the dreary Tierra del Fuego, when a great shadow like a cloud pa.s.sed over the deck. On looking up, the officer saw an immense albatross, its white breast glistening like snow, floating aloft with wide-spread wings. Wishing to examine the bird more closely, he gave orders for its capture. Fastening a piece of fat pork to a strong hook attached to a line, a sailor threw it overboard, and allowed full forty yards of cord to run out. The albatross soon descried the tempting morsel, and sweeping down in graceful circles to seize it, was soon securely hooked. The only show of resistance it made to being drawn on board was to extend its wings, and utter loud discordant cries.

Once on deck, its grace and majesty vanished. It showed no fear, and the hook, still fastened in its beak, did not seem to annoy it; but no landsman could have been more awkward than was the albatross on the smooth rocking deck. It staggered and waddled clumsily, and tried in vain to lift itself with its wings. It showed considerable temper, and snapped furiously at all who approached, and the captain's dog, which came trotting up, full of curiosity over the strange visitor, received a terrible blow from the hooked beak, which sent him howling with pain to the most distant corner of the deck. As the officer was desirous to preserve the beak, breast, wings, and feet of this magnificent creature as souvenirs, he ordered the sailors to kill it, although he states that it impressed him as though he were commanding the execution of some royal personage.

The albatross is an expert swimmer, and floats on the waves like a piece of cork, riding in undisturbed serenity over the lofty foaming crests of stormy billows. It is not, however, a good diver, and is obliged to subsist on whatever food comes to the surface. It might be called the vulture of the seas, for dead fish, floating carca.s.ses of whales, and other sea refuse form its main diet.

The habits of the albatross during the breeding season are still partially veiled in mystery, as the desolate mossy headlands of Tristan d'Acunha, Inaccessible Island, and other lands lying far to the southward, where the albatross makes its nest, are visited only at rare intervals. The island of Tristan is circular, and almost entirely volcanic, and on the summit of its cliffs, which rise a thousand feet above the sea, on broad dreary plains of dark gray lava, the albatrosses gather some time during November, and prepare themselves nests.

Selecting some s.p.a.ce free from tussock-gra.s.s, the bird sc.r.a.pes together a circle of dried gra.s.s and clay, in which it lays one egg about the size of a swan's, white, with a band of small brick-red spots round one end. But few naturalists have been able to visit these great breeding warrens, and none have determined how the albatross lives and feeds its young during its absence from the ocean. It is certain that the great bird rarely leaves its nest, for there is a wicked little robber gull ever on the watch to break and eat the egg, should the mother-bird desert it for a moment.

The young, when hatched, are snow-white, and covered with a soft woolly down. A traveller once climbed up the dangerous precipice of Tristan d'Acunha, and saw these young helpless things lying in the nests, while several hundred pair of parent birds were stalking awkwardly about. They all snapped their beaks with a great noise, and ejected from them an offensive oil--their only means of defense. The same traveller visited the place five months later, when he found all the young albatrosses sitting in their nests as before, but the old birds had all disappeared.

It is supposed that an albatross must be a year old before it can fly; and as the parents depart some time in April for their ocean hunting grounds, and are never seen to return until the breeding season again comes round, it is astonishing what feeds and supports the young until they are able to hunt for themselves. Naturalists wonder over this point, and advance many different theories, but as yet no facts have been discovered in regard to the diet of the young and helpless bird.

The albatross was formerly regarded with superst.i.tious reverence by sailors, who considered this majestic companion which came around the ship in desolate icy seas as a bird of good omen; and to kill one was considered a crime that would surely be punished by disaster and shipwreck. Coleridge, the English poet, has written a wonderful poem on this superst.i.tion, called the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," to which Gustave Dore, a French artist, has drawn a series of ill.u.s.trations picturing the lonely frozen ocean, and the majestic, lordly albatross which the unhappy sailor shot with his cross-bow, thereby bringing misfortune and death on the goodly ship and its crew.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "KITTY, YOU CAN'T HAVE MY APPLE."--ENGRAVED FROM A PICTURE BY F. DIELMAN, BY PERMISSION OF R. E. MOORE, AMERICAN ART GALLERY, NEW YORK.]

A BEAR STORY.

BY EMILY H. LELAND.

A good many years ago, when the century was young, there came to live in the big forests of Northern Vermont a man and his wife and their little boy. Partly because they liked to be high up out of the fogs and damp, and partly because there was little else but hilly land in that part of the country, they built their cabin at the top of a nice baby mountain, which was covered at the back with an immense orchard of maples and b.u.t.ternuts, but which was quite bare and steep at the east side, and had rocks cropping out which the farmer thought would be fine for building a good stone house with some day.

It was long, hard work starting a farm in a place where there was nothing but woods; but after a year or so had pa.s.sed by, and enough trees had been cleared away to make room for a corn field and a potato patch, and a little chicken-house and cow-shed had been added to their log-cabin, the young farmer used to sit down before their rough stone fire-place, with its bright crackling fire, and trot his boy to sleep upon his knee, while he watched the pretty young mamma putting away the supper things, thinking all the time what a rich and happy man he was.

And when at last a pig-pen was joined to the cow-shed, and two cunning little pink-nosed pigs had been bought of a neighbor five miles away, and placed in it, he felt richer and grander than many a man does nowadays who owns a railroad.

And how they grew, those pink-nosed pigs! They had a southern exposure, good drainage, plenty of dry leaves and moss for bedding, and an abundance of milk, with an occasional handful of cracked corn or a pint of mashed potatoes. How could they help growing? The farmer took great delight in feeding them, and his wife would sometimes ask him, with a laugh, "Now, Stephen, which do you love the most--the pigs or our little 'Lisha?"

Elisha was the baby's name. They hadn't thought of such names as Carl and Claude and Clarence in those days.

One fine moon-lit night, late in the fall, after the corn had been husked and carried into the loft, and some of the big yellow pumpkins had been cut into strips and hung on long poles near the kitchen ceiling to dry, and others had been stored away for the cow's luncheons and the Thanksgiving pies, and the potatoes were safe in the cellar, and the onions hung in long strings above the mantel-shelf, this young farmer covered up the glowing coals in the fire-place with ashes, so they would keep bright and hot for the morning fire, and went to bed feeling quite well prepared for winter, for he had that day "banked" the house clear up to its queer little windows, and made the cow-shed and pig-pen and hen-house very cozy with loads of hemlock and spruce boughs.

He was just dozing off to sleep, when all at once there sounded through the still, frosty air a long and terrible squeal from the pig-pen.

The farmer did not wait for it to end, but bounced out of bed, tore away the clumsy fastening of the door, and rushed out with a war-whoop that could have been heard a mile away if there had been anybody to hear it.

As he rushed he caught up a corn stalk that happened to lie in his way.

A corn stalk was a foolish thing for him to pick up, but people seldom stop to think twice in such moments. He was around by the pig-pen in no time, and there he saw a great burly _something_ just lifting one of his dear little pigs over the top of the pen. He rushed upon him, and struck him over the head with the corn stalk. There was a joint in the corn stalk nearly as hard as a crust of bread, and the _something_ seemed to almost feel it through his thick fur, for he turned about and looked at the farmer, as if saying,

"What do you want of _me_?"

And there he was--a great, black, full-grown bear!

"Drop him! drop him!" yelled the farmer; and he brought the corn stalk down upon the bear's nose. The bear dropped the pig very quickly, but he grabbed the man in place of it, and then commenced a grand wrestling match. The farmer was a strong man, and he was "fighting for the right."

The bear was strong too, and being a little tired of wild honey and beech-nuts, he had made up his mind to have a little spring pig for his family's supper. As they pushed and pulled this way and that, the bear tripped against a stump, and down they came, bear and man, to the ground; and being near the steep hill-side, in about ten seconds they began rolling down, over and over, and faster and faster, b.u.mping over rocks and hummocks, but never letting go, and never stopping until the bottom of the hill was reached.

And then--

Up got Mr. Bear, and made off down the valley at a slow trot, never stopping to say "good-night" or anything. And up got the farmer, and scrambled up the hill as fast as his bruised legs could carry him, and feeling of his ribs as he went, expecting to find half a dozen of them at least punching out through his night-gown. But they were not.

At the door he was met by his wife keeping guard with the birch broom over her sleeping boy.

"Oh, Stephen! what _was_ it?" she said, in a shivering whisper.

"Oh! nothing but a bear, nothing but a bear," said the farmer.