Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe by Yonge, Charlotte Mary, 1823-1901

The wine-press was a great marble trough with pipes leading off into other vessels around. Into it went the grapes, and in the midst were men and boys and little children, all with bare feet and legs up to the knees, dancing and leaping, and bounding and skipping upon the grapes, while the red juice covered their brown skins.

"Come in, come in; you don't know how charming it is!" cried Cecco. "It is the best time of all the year, the dear vintage; come in and tread the grapes."

"But you must take off your shoes and stockings," said his sister, Nunziata; "we never wear them but on Sundays and holidays."

Lucy was not sure that she might, but the children looked so joyous, and it seemed to be such fun, that she began fumbling with the buttons of her boots, and while she was doing it she opened her eyes, and found that her beautiful bunch of grapes was only the cushion in the bottom of Mother Bunch's chair.

CHAPTER IV. GREENLAND.

"Now suppose I tried what the very cold countries are like!"

And Lucy bent over the globe till she was nearly ready to cut her head off with the brass meridian, as she looked at the long, jagged tongue, with no particular top to it, hanging down on the east side of America. Perhaps it was the making herself so cold that did it, but she found herself in the midst of snow, snow, snow! All was snow except the sea, and that was a deep green, and in it were monstrous, floating white things, pinnacled all over like a Cathedral, and as big, and with hollows in them of glorious deep blue and green, like jewels; Lucy knew they were icebergs. A sort of fringe of these cliffs of ice hemmed in the shore. And on one of them stood what she thought at first was a little brown bear, for the light was odd, the sun was so very low down, and there was so much glare from the snow that it seemed unnatural. However, before she had time to be afraid of the bear, she saw that it was really a little boy, with a hood and coat and leggings of thick, thick fur, and a spear in his hand, with which he every now and then made a dash at a fish,--great cod fish, such as Mamma had often on a Friday.

Into them went his spear, up came the poor fish, which was strung with some others on a string the boy carried. Lucy crept up as well as she could on the slippery ice, and the little Esquimaux stared at her with a kind of stupid surprise.

"Is that the way you get fish?" she asked.

"Yes, and seals; father gets them," he said.

"Oh, what's that swimming out there?"

"That's a white bear," he said coolly; "we had better get home."