雙語+MP3|美國學(xué)生世界地理37 一英里高的一堆灰

     A PILE of ashes is not usually very beautiful, and if it is in your back yard it is usually very ugly. But in Italy there is a pile of ashes which every one thinks beautiful, though it is nearly a mile high and though it is in the back yard of a city called Naples. It is on the beautiful Bay of Naples, and people have built their homes and hotels around the bay so as to get a view of this pile of ashes, which is called Mount Vesuvius, though it's not really a mountain at all.
     In olden days when grown-up people believed in fairy-tales they said that a lame blacksmith lived down under the ground, that he kept a huge furnace burning there to heat the iron with which he worked. His name they said was Vulcan, and the smoke and flame that came out of the ground and the ashes that piled up above the ground were from his fires. So we call these mountains of ashes, through the top of which fire and smoke pour forth, volcanoes, after Vulcan.
     There are volcanoes in many places in the World, but Vesuvius is the best known of all. We now know that volcanoes are huge fiery furnaces beneath the ground, but we also know that no man nor fairy nor god is down there keeping them burning. Some volcanoes in other parts of the World have burned out, but the fires of Vesuvius have not. Vesuvius is always smoking and burning. We can see smoke or steam coming out of its top in the day and we can see the firelight come out of its top at night, but usually it does no more damage than a huge smoking chimney would. But every now and then the fires start burning fiercely and rock and ashes are shot up into the air, and pieces of rock are blown to such fine powder that they float in the air like dust. This dust may float for months in the air and for thousands of miles to other countries far off from the volcano from which it comes. Strange to say, it is this dust from volcanoes that often makes the sunsets such brilliant colors.


     The fire in volcanoes is hotter than any fire we can make. We can make a fire so hot that it will melt copper and iron, but we can't make a fire so hot that it will melt rock. A volcano fire melts rock as easily as if it were butter. The rock that the volcano melts flows over the top like a pot boiling over and runs down the sides in streams that gradually harden into rock as they cool off. This rock is called lava, and as there is plenty of lava around Naples the people there use blocks of lava to pave their streets.
     Some years ago I was in Naples after Vesuvius had been firing up. The streets of Naples were filled with what looked like gray snow. The gray snow was dust that had fallen from the volcano, but it would not melt like snow and had to be carted away and dumped into the Bay of Naples. I wanted to see what the inside of a volcano looked like. There had been a railway almost to the top, but it had been wrecked. So I climbed from the bottom to the top, though it took half a day to do so, for at each step my feet sank deep into the ashes. I looked over the edge, down into the fiery mouth of the volcano. Every now and then pieces of rock would shoot high into the air and, looking up, I would dodge those that fell near-by. Entirely, too many were falling around me, so I started back down the side of the volcano. I didn't walk down, I jumped, for each step I took was like jumping off a house, and at each step I fell, only I didn't hurt myself when I fell, for I sank into the ashes up to my knees, up to my waist, up to my neck. It was great fun, like jumping into a pile of hay, only it was oh, so dirty! It took me half a day to go up-it took me about ten minutes to come down-but hours to wash off the ashes when I was down, and my clothes were utterly ruined.


     Some birds build their nests on the tops of chimneys, but it seems strange that people should build their homes at the foot of a volcano that may blow up and destroy them at any time. Yet long, long ago people built a city at the foot of Vesuvius, nearer even than Naples. It was called Pompeii. All of a sudden one day Vesuvius began to burn and boil and then blew up. Before any one in Pompeii knew what was going to happen, before any one had time to move from the spot where he was working or playing, Vesuvius had poured down on this little city its deadly fire and smoke and gas, and every one was killed where he stood and buried deep in dust and ashes. There the city and its people lay buried for almost two thousand years. Not so very long ago the city was dug out, its houses and temples and theaters were uncovered, and travelers can now visit the ruins, walk through the streets, and go into the houses and shops where once upon a time people went about their daily tasks and pleasures without a thought that the end of the World was coming to them in the twinkling of an eye.
     No one knows when Vesuvius may do the same thing again, but the people in Naples never seem to think of such a thing; they don't worry; they go about the streets singing happily; in fact, it's one of the few cities in the World where people sing on the streets.
     We may hear people whistling on the street in this country, but seldom, if ever, do we hear them sing on the streets. Singing may not be a sign of happiness at all, but people in Naples sing and sing, especially at night. Taxi drivers sing, ragged street urchins sing, beggars sing, and they sing songs you hear at concerts or in the opera. One of the greatest singers that ever lived, who now is dead, but whom you can still hear singing on the phonograph, was once a street urchin in Naples. Then he came to America. His name was Caruso.
     The Italian language is the language of singing, the language of music. Some one has said you can't help singing if you speak Italian. Even the sheet music we use in this country is usually written in Italian and the directions for playing are given in Italian. In Italian almost every word ends in a vowel, that is, in a, e, i, o, or u. Piano and 'cello, soprano and alto are Italian words. Even Naples ends in a vowel, for in Italian it is called Napoli.
     The name "Goat" is neither pretty nor musical and it wouldn't sound well in a song, but across the Bay of Naples is an island the name of which in English is goat; but in Italian it is "Capri," and songs are sung about "Bella Capri"-the beautiful Capri-the beautiful Goat Island.
     In the rocky shore of Capri there is a sea cave which you can only enter in a rowboat through a low opening. The opening is so low you have to duck your head, and if the waves are high you can't go through at all. The cave is called the Blue Grotto, for inside this rocky cave the water is such a beautiful clear blue that it seems almost as if your boat were floating on sky instead of on water. What makes it so blue? If you dip some of the water up in a bottle to take home as a souvenir-as I have known people to do-the water is just as colorless as the water in your own bathtub.