雙語+MP3|美國學(xué)生世界地理65 財富島

     HAVE you ever been homesick? If you haven't, then you have never been far away from home for any length of time, or you never had a home. Just suppose you lived on the other side of the World from your father and mother, from your sisters, brothers, and friends, and were only able to get home once in five or ten years, or maybe never. The English people probably love their homes more and get more homesick than any other people in the World, and yet they go farthest away from home and live there.

     There is a big island, so big that it is usually called a continent and so far off from England that it used to take five or six months, a half year, to get to it from England, and even now it takes a month or more by ship. On it lived only wild black men, yet the English people went there, built great cities and now rule over the island. This island is Australia, which means "South Land," for it is far, far south-south of the Equator, where it is summer when it is winter here and night when it is day here. The island was so far away the English thought it would be a good place to send prisoners, to get rid of them, because once there they could not get away and they could not harm anybody but themselves. Many prisoners were sent there and few of them ever came back. Some even died of homesickness, for even a criminal is human and gets homesick.

     It was not very long, however, before the English found that this island was too good just for prisoners. The central part of Australia was a desert, but there were gold mines in the desert, and neither a desert nor danger will keep men away when gold, magic gold, is to be found. So a great many young Englishmen went out to Australia in search of gold and to make their fortunes, expecting to return home as soon as they had done so. But they found that it cost more to get the gold than it was worth-it didn't pay. They didn't give up, however. They were bound to make their fortunes in one way or another, so they tried another. In the southeastern part of this island was grass land. Grass was good for raising sheep and cattle, but there were no sheep and no cattle. So the Englishmen sent to England for sheep and cattle. But when the sheep and cattle came it was found that they would not eat the grass-it was not the right kind. And still the Englishmen were not discouraged. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." So they sent back again to England and got good grass seed and planted that. And then at last they did succeed, for the grass grew exceedingly well and before long the sheep and cattle turned out to be a "gold mine," better even than the gold mines they had expected to find. From the sheep that they raised they got the finest wool in the World-very long and silky. It was shipped to England and other places to make woolen clothing, and Australia is now the greatest wool-raising country i. t. w. W. And the cattle grew and prospered, and now frozen beef and mutton are sent back to England, which hasn't nearly enough beef of its own.

     But not long after the sheep and cattle had gotten a good start a peculiar thing happened. An Englishman carried a pair of pet rabbits out to Australia. The pair of rabbits got loose and started to raise families. Now rabbits as well as sheep like grass. But rabbits raise families very, very fast, much faster than sheep or cattle, so before very long there were more rabbits in the country than there were sheep, and there were so many millions of rabbits eating up the grass and running wild over everything that there was not enough grass for the sheep. More rabbits and more rabbits and more rabbits-the people could not get rid of them. Men poisoned millions of them and trapped millions more, but for every million killed, millions more were born. It was like some of the plagues that visited Egypt in Bible times. The people built a wire fence all the way across the country to try to pen the rabbits in. But some of them escaped through the fence, so another fence was built. Men are still killing them off by the millions. They pack some of the rabbit meat in cans and send it to England, and they send the skins back also-"a rabbit skin to wrap up Baby Bunting in." But they cannot get rid of the little creatures altogether and probably never will.

     The native animals in Australia are very peculiar. One curious animal is the kangaroo, an animal as big as a man. He stands on his two hind legs like a dog begging for food. He uses his tail as if it were a third leg, sitting upon his two legs and tail as if on a three-legged stool. His two front legs are very small and almost useless. He doesn't run along on all fours; he jumps over the ground on his hind legs, making long hops. The mother kangaroo carries her babies in a pocket made of the skin of her stomach; it is a nest and a cradle.
     Sailors used to return from long voyages and say they had seen living in the sea beautiful girls-from the waist up-with bodies like fish from the waist down. They called them mermaids. You have heard of them in fairy-tales, of course. Well, there are real mermaids on the west coast of Australia. They do live in the sea, and they do hold their babies in their arms. From a distance a sailor might imagine them beautiful; but close up they do not look like the beautiful girls with fish tails you read about, for they are really ugly animals called sea-cows. How disappointing!

     The natives of Australia are black people called "Bushmen." They can't count even up to ten nor write their names nor read a single word. About the only thing they know is how to get food. They wear very little clothing. Instead of clothing they paint their bodies, and they raise bumps on their skin by scratching it with the edge of a shell and rubbing clay into the scratches. The more bumps they have on their bodies, the more beautiful they think they are.
     The Bushmen have a peculiar plaything called a boomerang. It is made of a piece of wood shaped like a new moon. They throw it into the air away from themselves, and it turns round and round like a wheel and, if properly thrown, will come back to the thrower. I have several boom-erangs which I have learned to throw. A friend of mine once said, "I hear you know how to throw a kangaroo." "To throw a kangaroo!" said I. "No, not even a Bushman can do that."

     The capital of Australia used to be a city called Melbourne. But a new city called Canberra has been built for the capital. It is a made-to-order city. The city was laid out, streets made, a capitol built, and houses put up, and then people moved in. The chief city is Sydney.
     The healthiest country in the World is southeast of Australia. It is called New Zealand. You will remember that Zealand is a part of Denmark and you may remember that it is the healthiest country in Europe. New Zealand is made of two big islands that look something like Italy or a boot turned upside down. They do not seem to be far away from Australia on the map, but it takes four or five days to get to them by ship from Australia. In the northern part of New Zealand are natives called Maoris, but they are quite different from the Bushmen in Australia. They used to be cannibals, but they have brains, and they learned so much from the white men that now some of them are as well educated as their teachers, and are even members of the New Zealand Parliament.