School Reading by Grades: Sixth Year. James Baldwin

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СКАЧАТЬ so this story being brought to a close," his father says, "we find that you had no adventures at all!"

      "No, papa, nothing happened; nothing particular, I mean."

      Nothing particular! If they could have known, they would have thought lightly in comparison of the dangers of "the jib-boom end, and the main topmast crosstrees." But they did not know, any more than we do, of the dangers that hourly beset us. Some few dangers we are aware of, and we do what we can to provide against them; but, for the greater portion, "our eyes are held that we can not see." We walk securely under His guidance, without whom "not a sparrow falleth to the ground!" and when we have had escapes that the angels have wondered at, we come home and say, perhaps, that "nothing has happened; at least nothing particular."

      —Jean Ingelow.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

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      The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

       Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.

       Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;

       They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.

       The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,

       And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

      Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood

       In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

       Alas! they all are in their graves; the gentle race of flowers

       Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.

       The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain

       Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

      The windflower and the violet, they perished long ago,

       And the brier rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;

       But on the hill the goldenrod, and the aster in the wood,

       And the yellow sunflower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,

       Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,

       And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.

      And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still such days will come,

       To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;

       When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,

       And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,

       The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,

       And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.

      And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,

       The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side.

       In the cold, moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf,

       And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief:

       Yet not unmeet it was that one like that young friend of ours,

       So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.

THE GREAT VOLCANIC ERUPTION.

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      In 1883 the most destructive volcanic eruption ever known occurred in the Straits of Sunda and the neighboring islands. The trouble began on Sunday morning, the 13th of May. Java, Sumatra, and Borneo were convulsed by earthquakes. The surface of the earth rocked, houses tumbled down, and big trees were shaken to the ground. Earthquakes are no rarity in those islands, but this earthquake showed no signs of ceasing. The earth quivered constantly, and from its depths there seemed to rise strange sounds and hollow explosions.

      On Thursday there came a telegram from Anjer, ninety miles away, on the northwest coast of Java, intimating that a volcano had broken out at Krakatoa island, about thirty miles west of Anjer, in Sunda Strait. I was requested by the Dutch government to go to the scene of action and take scientific observations, and by four o'clock that afternoon I started with a party on board a special steamer from Batavia.

      As we rounded the northern extremity of Java, we saw ascending from Krakatoa, still fifty miles away, an immense column of smoke. Its appearance changed as we approached. First it looked like flame, then it appeared to be steam, and finally it had the appearance of a pillar of fire inside one of white fleecy wool. The diameter of this pillar of fire and smoke was, I should think, at least one and a half miles. All the while we heard that sullen, thunderous roar which had been a feature of this disturbance ever since Sunday, and was now becoming louder.

       We remained on deck all night and watched. The din increased till we could with difficulty hear one another's voices. Dawn approached, and when the rays of the sun fell on the shores of Krakatoa, we saw them reflected from what we thought was a river, and we resolved to steam into its mouth and disembark.

      When we came to within three quarters of a mile of the shore, we discovered that what we supposed to be a river was a torrent of molten sulphur. The smell almost overpowered us. We steamed away to the windward, and made for the other side of the island.

      This island, though volcanic, had up till now been quiet for at least a century. It was eight or ten miles long and four wide, and was covered with forests of fine mahogany and rosewood trees. It was inhabited by a few fishermen, but we found no signs of these people. The land, down to the water's edge, was covered with powdered pumice stone, which rained down from the clouds around the great column of fire. Everything with life had already disappeared from the landscape, which was covered with a steaming mass of stones and ashes.

      Several of us landed and began walking towards the volcano. We sank deep in the soft pumice, which blistered our feet with its heat. I climbed painfully upwards toward the crater, in order to measure it with my sextant; but in a short time the heat melted the mercury off the mirror of the instrument. I was then half a mile from the crater.

      As I was returning to the shore, I saw the bottom of each footstep I had made on my way up glowing red with the heat from beneath. We photographed the scene from the deck of the steamer, where the fire hose was kept playing constantly, wetting the rigging and everything about the ship to prevent her from taking fire.

      The steamer then returned to Batavia, and I went to reside at Anjer. From my villa on the hillside a mile inland, I could see Krakatoa, thirty miles away, belching out its never-ending eruption. We supposed that it would go on till it burned itself out, and that then it would become quiet again. But in this we were mistaken.

      On Sunday СКАЧАТЬ