United States or Cocos Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


An immense bronze pyramid, crowned by a female figure, which turned with the wind. 4th. The colossal statue of Bellerophon, in bronze, which was broken down and cast into the furnace. Under the inner nail of the horse's hind foot on the left side, was found a seal wrapped in a woollen cloth. 5th.

At their approach it shot out a tremendous blast of its fiery breath and enveloped Bellerophon and his steed in a perfect atmosphere of flame, singeing the wings of Pegasus, scorching off one whole side of the young man's ringlets, and making them both far hotter than was comfortable from head to foot. But this was nothing to what followed.

But and this was the most wonderful part of the matter the three spires of smoke evidently issued from the nostrils of these three heads! So strange was the spectacle, that, though Bellerophon had been all along expecting it, the truth did not immediately occur to him, that here was the terrible three-headed Chimæra. He had found out the Chimæra's cavern.

Oh, how heavily passes the time, while an adventurous youth is yearning to do his part in life, and to gather in the harvest of his renown! How hard a lesson it is to wait! Our life is brief, and how much of it is spent in teaching us only this! Well was it for Bellerophon that the gentle child had grown so fond of him, and was never weary of keeping him company.

Before reaching the mountain top these three black smoke-wreaths mingled themselves into one. The cavern was almost directly beneath the winged horse and his rider, at the distance of about a thousand feet. The smoke, as it crept heavily upward, had an ugly, sulphurous, stifling scent which caused Pegasus to snort and Bellerophon to sneeze.

Bellerophon caught the child in his arms, and shrank back with him, so that they were both hidden among the thick shrubbery which grew all around the fountain. Not that he was afraid of any harm, but he dreaded lest, if Pegasus caught a glimpse of them, he would fly far away, and alight in some inaccessible mountain-top. For it was really the winged horse.

The closing scenes in the life of the great Emperor only now remain to be briefly touched upon. In a previous chapter we have narrated the surrender of Napoleon, his voyage to England, and his transference from the Bellerophon to the Northumberland.

The other ships were the Triumph, Sir Erasmus Gower, the Brunswick, and Bellerophon, seventy-fours, the Phaeton and Pallas frigates, and the Kingfisher, an eighteen gun brig. We sailed at the end of May from Spithead, for a cruise off Ushant. On the 8th of June we made the land about the Penmarcks on the French coast, and soon after the Triumph threw out the signal of six sail east by north.

On the 7th of August Bonaparte, with the suite he had selected, was transferred from the 'Bellerophon' to the 'Northumberland'. Lord Keith's barge was prepared for his conveyance to the latter vessel, and his lordship was present on the occasion.

The rustic people who dwelt in the neighbourhood, and drove their cattle to the fountain to drink, would often laugh at poor Bellerophon, and sometimes take him pretty severely to task. They told him that an able-bodied young man like himself ought to have better business than to be wasting his time in such an idle pursuit.