雙語+MP3|美國學(xué)生世界地理61 人造山

     ALL the continents begin with an "A" except one.
     Asia is the largest continent.
     Africa is the next largest.
     But Africa was an "In-the-Way" continent. It was in the way of those who wanted to get to Asia. Every one wanted to get around Africa. No one wanted to get to it. Sailors had been shipwrecked on its shores, but few lived to tell the tale of jungles of wild animals and wild black men. Africa was called the Dark Continent because no one knew much about it or wanted to know about it. Like children afraid of the dark, people were afraid of the Dark Continent. On one edge-along the Mediterranean Sea-white men lived, but south of that edge was a great desert that men feared to cross, and south of that wild black men and wild animals. But in one corner of Africa, the corner near Asia and along the Red Sea, white people had been living and mighty kings had been ruling for thousands of years. This corner country is called Egypt.

     Have you ever seen a man one hundred years old? I have seen a man five thousands years old-a real man, a little dried up man who was once a mighty ruler of Egypt. He did not want to "turn to dust" when he died, for how then could he rise again from the dead at the Day of Judgment? So he left orders that he should be pickled and wrapped in bandages and a mountain of stone placed over his body to make sure it would not be touched or moved away. In fact, he built the mountain of stone before he died, to make sure of that part of it. But you can never tell what will happen to you after you are dead, so in spite of the mountain of stone, here he is, a ruler of Egypt whom millions obeyed, now in a case in a museum where any one can stare at him, and the janitor dusts his face and moves him out of the way to sweep the floor. A pickled man is called a mummy, and the mummies of many such rulers of Egypt are now in museums.


     One of the Seven Wonders of the World was these mountains of stone called pyramids, which the kings built when they were alive, to be tombs for themselves when dead. Each king tried to build a bigger and better pyramid than the king before him. The largest pyramid was built by a king called Cheops, who died nearly three thousand years before Christ was born. It is said that it took one hundred thousand people ten years to build his tomb.

     The outsides of the pyramids used to be smooth slanting walls, but people have taken out stone from the sides to build other buildings, so that now the outsides of the pyramids are as rough as piled-up heaps of stones and you can climb from stone to stone on up to the top. Cheops's tomb and most of the other tombs or pyramids are of solid rock, with just a small room in the center, which was left for the body of the king and the things he had used when he was alive. The old Egyptians thought they must keep their furniture and other things around them, so that on the Judgment Day, when they should be awakened from their long sleep, they would be all ready to go on housekeeping. After Cheops's body was put into the tomb the passageway leading to it was filled up tight with stone, and all traces of the opening were hidden so that no one could find it and steal his body away. But, nevertheless, some one did find it out, stole his mummy and all the things that had been left there for his use in the next World, and if his soul ever returns it will find nobody.

     The ancient Egyptians worshiped fairy-tale gods and even animals. Bulls and beetles were sacred and they made mummies of them. Now, however, nine out of every ten people in Egypt are Mohammedans and, instead of building pyramids, they build beautiful mosques.

     Close by these big pyramids is the Sphinx, a huge stone figure with the body of a lion and the head of one of the Egyptian kings. In Greece a sphinx was supposed to be an animal with a woman's head that sat by the road and asked passers-by this riddle: "What is it that goes on four feet in the morning, two at midday, and three at night?" If the traveler couldn't tell the answer the sphinx devoured him. At last some one answered, "Man, because he crawls on all fours in the morning of his life, then walks on two feet, and finally on two feet and a cane." The Greek sphinx was a "she". But the Egyptian sphinx is a "he." He has a man's head and he asked no riddles. He was a god of the sun.


     The Sphinx and pyramids are on the bank of the one and only great river of Egypt, called the Nile. Have you ever heard of crocodile tears? The crocodile is a big alligator-like animal that lives in the Nile, and people used to say that he would catch little Egyptian boys and while he was eating them he would weep as if his heart would break. That's why when you cry, though you don't really mean it, we say you are shedding "crocodile tears"! The Nile splits into several branches before it empties into the Mediterranean Sea, and the land between the branches is called a delta, because it is shaped like the Greek letter "D," which was called delta and shaped like a triangle. You see, people of long ago also called places after common things which they thought had the same shape.

     Hardly any rain falls in northern Egypt, but in southern Egypt there are heavy rains in the summer. Then the Nile overflows its banks and floods the country and leaves great quantities of mud. This mud is very rich soil in which the Egyptians grow wheat and a very fine kind of cotton. In the olden times the Nile used to overflow the banks only once a year, and the rest of the year the land would be dry and the people would have to climb down the banks to get water. Not so long ago a huge dam was built far up the Nile at a place called Assuan. This dam holds the water back and forms a deep lake. So now the Nile does not flood lower Egypt all at once; the water is let out by doors in the bottom of the dam as needed. One of the most beautiful of the old temples in Egypt was right in the way when the Assuan Dam was built, but it could not be moved from there, so now the water almost covers it up.

     There was once a boy named Aleck. You may know a boy named Aleck too, but this Aleck lived two thousand years ago. He was a great Greek king whose full name was Alexander. He built a city where the Nile flows into the sea and called the city after himself, Alexandria. Alexander has been dead more than two thousand years, but his city still lives and is the chief seaport of Egypt.

     Near the beginning of the delta, up the river from Alexandria, is a city called Cairo. It is the largest city in Egypt and also the largest city in the whole of Africa. Even if you were flying over Cairo in an airplane you would know that most of the people there were not Christians but Mohammedans. Can you guess how? In a Christian city you would see church steeples, but in Cairo you see saucer-shaped domes and candle-shaped minarets, for some of the most beautiful mosques in the World are there.