Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/318

328 and then, to issue from the crater on the summit of the cone, and great devastation was apprehended.

In the midst of this spectacle and its dangers, carriages were circling round on the broad Chiaja, in unimpeded career and gayety. There is every afternoon a regular stream of carriages, greater and less, from the Viennese carriage to the corricolo, with from twenty to five-and-twenty persons, after one horse, and people of all classes, from princes and princesses, to girls, boys, and sailors. It is especially the equipages of the latter, their horses adorned with feathers and finery, which you now and then see driving madly in the endeavor the one to pass the other. The drivers shriek and shout; the vehicles drive along three or four abreast. Pedestrians were fewer in number, and behaved quietly, all except the boys, who seem to me here to be a kind of quadruped, continually lying on the streets amidst the tumult, the wild career, and the affrays.

Another lively scene also presented itself here within view of the flames of Vesuvius.

A young girl entered an open space on the Chiaja, beating the basque on an old tambourine, to a lively and marked tune; she took her stand under a tree, and began to sing as she beat her tambourine. Immediately a circle of girls was formed round her, together with children, better and worse clad. Two ragged girls began to dance with castanets. Two others followed their example, well-dressed, and handsome, who struck the castanets extremely well, and danced well also. Many came in the same way, the castanets passing from one pair to another. Nurse-maids came up. ,