The Sunbonnet Babies in Italy

MP3 Audio CD. The Sunbonnet Babies in Italy

THE ARRIVAL AT NAPLES


"See that smoking mountain, Molly! Look! I believe it is a volcano. It
is Mount Vesuvius. Yes, I know it is Mount Vesuvius!"

May, the Sunbonnet Baby, was talking with Molly, her little Sunbonnet
Baby sister. They were standing on the deck of a great ocean steamer.
They had been sailing on the steamer for days and days. They had
sailed more than four thousand miles away from their home in America.
Now they were almost at the end of their journey. They would very soon
be in Italy.

The big steamer was moving slowly up the beautiful Bay of Naples,
straight toward the busy, noisy city of Naples. Rising from the
shore, not far away, was the smoking mountain of Vesuvius, about which
the Sunbonnet Babies' father had told them such strange stories.

He told them that Mount Vesuvius was like a great kettle full of
boiling rock, that sometimes the fire under the kettle becomes so hot
it boils over, covering the mountain sides and even the plains with
melted rock and hot ashes. Such mountains, he said, are called
volcanoes.

Molly and May stood on the deck of the steamer eagerly watching the
smoking volcano, wondering if it would ever boil over again.

"I almost wish it would boil over now!" cried Molly. "Wouldn't it be
wonderful to see red-hot rock come right out of the top of the
mountain and fall down all around it!"

"Yes, it would be wonderful," said May, "but I am sure I don't want to
see it. The hot ashes might even reach us here on the steamer."