The Knickerbocker | Page 8

the Calabrian coast visible, I should suppose, for two hundred miles,
like a long horizontal bank of vapor! As the sun rose, the great
pyramidal shadow of Ætna was cast across the island, and all beneath it
rested in twilight-gloom. Turning from this wonderful scene, we looked
down into the crater, on whose verge we lay. It was a fearful sight,
apparently more than a thousand feet in depth, and a mile in breadth,
with precipitous and in some places overhanging sides, which were
varied with strange and discordant colors. The steeps were rent into
deep chasms and gulfs, from which issued white sulphurous smoke,
that rose and hung in fantastic wreaths about the horrid crags; thence
springing over the edge of the crater, seemed to dissipate in the clear
keen air. I was somewhat surprised to perceive several sheets of snow
lying at the very bottom of the crater, a proof that the internal fires were
in a deep slumber. The edge of the crater was a mere ridge of scoriæ
and ashes, varying in height; and it required some care, in places, to
avoid falling down the steep on one hand, or being precipitated into the
gulf on the other. The air was keen; but fortunately there was little wind;
and after spending about an hour on the summit, we commenced our
descent.
We varied our course from the one we took on ascending, and visited
an altar erected to Jupiter by the ancients, now called the Torre del
Filosofo. Soon after we came upon the verge of a vast crater, the period
of whose activity is beyond the earliest records of history. Val di Bove,
as it is called, is a tremendous scene. Imagine a basin several miles
across, a thousand feet in depth at least, with craggy and perpendicular
walls on every side; its bottom broken into deep ravines and chasms,
and shattered pinnacles, as though the lava in its molten state had been
shaken and tossed by an earthquake, and then suddenly congealed. It is
into this ancient crater that the lava of the most recent eruption is
descending. It is fortunate that it has taken that direction.

In another and concluding number, the reader's attention will be
directed to the Architectural Antiquities of Sicily, especially those of
Grecian structure, which will be described in the order in which they
were visited.

LINES TO TIME.
BY MRS. J. WEBB.
Oh Time! I'll weave, to deck thy brow, A wreath fresh culled from
Flora's treasure: If thou wilt backward turn thy flight To youth's bright
morn of joy and pleasure. 'Joys ill exchanged for riper years;' The bard,
alas! hath truly spoken: I've wept the truth in burning tears O'er many a
fair hope crushed and broken.
In vain my sager, wiser friends Told of thy speed and wing untiring; I
drank of Pleasure's honied cup, Nor marked thy flight, no change
desiring; When all too late I gave thee chase, But found thou couldst
not be o'ertaken: With heedless wing thou'st onward swept, Though
hopes were crushed and empires shaken.
Thou with the world thy flight began'st; Compared with thine, what
were the knowledge Of every sage in every clime, The learning of the
school or college? Thou'st seen, in all the pomp of power, Athens, the
proudest seat of learning; And thou couldst tell us if thou wouldst, How
Nero looked when Rome was burning.
What direful sights hast thou beheld, As careless thou hast journied on:
The hemlock-bowl for Athen's pride; The gory field of Marathon; The
monarch crowned, the warrior plumed, With power and with ambition
burning; Yet they must all have seemed to thee Poor pigmies on a pivot
turning.
Their pomp, their power, with thine compared, How blank and void,
how frail and fleeting! Thou hast not paused e'en o'er their tombs To
give their mighty spirits greeting; But onward still with untired wing,
Regardless thou 'rt thy flight pursuing, Unseen, alas! till thou art past,

While o'er our heads thy snows thou 'rt strewing.
Oh! vainly may poor mortals strive With learned lore of school and
college; Their books may teach us wisdom's rules, But thou alone canst
teach us knowledge. Oh! had I earlier known thy worth, I had not now
been left repining, Nor asked to weave for thee the wreath That on my
youthful brow was shining. Could but again the race be mine, In life's
young morn, I'd seek and find thee; I'd seize thee by thy flowing lock,
And never more be left behind thee!

A NIGHT ON THE PRAIRIE.
BY A BUFFALO HUNTER.
While looking over my 'omnium gatherum;' the same being a drawer
containing scraps of poetry, unfinished letters, half-written editorials,
incidents of travel, obsolete briefs, with many other odds and ends