双语+MP3|美国学生世界地理62 害怕黑暗

     IT takes about two months to cross the Sahara Desert by camel from top to bottom, and there is no other way to go than by camel or airplane-no railroads, no auto roads, no roads of any kind. On the southern edge of the desert is a place called Timbuktu. When people want to describe a very long distance they often say, "from Kalamazoo to Timbuktu." Kalamazoo is in Michigan in the United States and Timbuktu is in Africa. Timbuktu is the starting point for caravans going north across the Sahara to the countries along the Mediterranean and it is the ending point for caravans coming from those countries.

     The Sahara has no rain, but south of the Sahara is a part of Africa called the Sudan, which has plenty of rain. The Sudan means "the land of the Black People."
     When-I-was-a-boy we used to say that God made white people in the day and black people at night. Some say black people are simply white people tanned by the sun, which is so hot where they live that the tan never wears off.
     The Sudan has one great river called the Niger. Like the Nile, that other great river in Africa beginning with an "N," the Niger fertilizes the land through which it runs. The Niger empties into the great Gulf of Guinea, a name which even intelligent people sometimes mix with Guiana in South America. Along the edge of the Gulf of Guinea are little countries, all of which except one belong to countries in Europe.
     This one country, at the corner of the Gulf of Guinea, is called Liberia. It is like a tiny United States; in fact, it was copied after the United States, but the president and all the people are colored, and the way it came to be so is this:

     When our country was first started, the white men wanted some one to do farming and other work for them. So pirates captured black people from the shores of Africa, brought them to the United States, and sold them as slaves, just as the pirates on the Mediterranean captured white people from ships on the sea and made slaves of them. All the colored people in the United States to-day are descended from these black slaves who were brought from Africa. Many people in our country thought these poor slaves, whose fathers and grandfathers had been stolen away from their homes in Africa, should be sent back to their own land. So when Monroe was President of the United States some of our colored people who had been set free and wanted to go "home" were put on a ship and sent back. Home was Home-even if it was a jungle. There they started this little country called Liberia, which means "Land of Liberty." They named their capital Monrovia after President Monroe and named some of their villages after great cities here. Two of their villages they called New York and Philadelphia, although there are but a few hundred people in them. Instead of trying to forget the land where they had been enslaved they imitated it.

     As you go farther south in Africa you reach the Equator. This is half-way land between the North and South Poles, and the second greatest river in Africa, called the Congo, runs through it. In this part of Africa it is hot and rainy every month in the year. Things grow and keep on growing. Grass grows as high as a room. Vines and trees and everything else grow so thick, so close together, and in such a tangle that one can hardly get through them. It is something like that other Equator land-in South America-the Selvas.
     A hundred years ago people knew little or nothing about this part of Africa. It was an unhealthful and a dangerous country for the white man. The marshes and jungles gave white men fever, and there was a little fly called the tsetse which gave men a disease called sleeping sickness, from which they never awoke. Besides all these terrible things there were fierce wild animals that killed those who escaped other things.

     And then there was born in Scotland a boy named David Livingstone. He was just like you or me until he was ten years old. But when he was ten years old he left school and went to work in a cotton mill. There he worked all day from six in the morning until eight at night. If you count this up you will find that it was fourteen hours a day he worked-and he was only ten years old. Every day in the week he worked this way, but when he went home at night he wasn't through working. After his supper he would study until he fell asleep over his books. Livingstone's one idea in life was to be of some good in the world and to help people who were sick and miserable. So he studied to be a doctor, and he decided he would go to China. He thought also they should be made Christians. So he learned to be a minister as well as a doctor. But he didn't go to China at all. He was sent to Africa instead.

     Every one said he would die, he would be stung by the deadly tsetse fly, or he would drink water that would give him a fever, or he would be devoured by some wild animal. "If I'm going to die," said he, "it doesn't matter which way. I'll have to die some day, but I want to do some good before that day." So he went to Africa.

     Thirty years passed and though he went back home several times he always returned to Africa and at last he disappeared. He was given up for lost, and his countrymen thought him dead. But some people in our country got the idea that he might still be alive, so they sent a newspaper reporter named Stanley to look for him. They thought a reporter could find him if anybody could. Stanley landed on the west coast of Africa and asked the black men by signs if any one had seen a white man. Most of the black men said "no"-thirty years was too long a time to remember-in fact, most that were alive then were dead. But some black men said they had heard their fathers say that a white man had once passed through that way, and they pointed toward the east. So Stanley kept on going east and still east. After a long, long while he came to a long, long lake that has a long, long name-Tanganyika. When he reached this lake an old white man came to meet him. Stanley said, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" just as if he were greeting a stranger whom he had been sent to meet at the railroad station. Of course, it was Livingstone, and Stanley tried to get him to go back with him.

     But Livingstone said, "No, my work is here, teaching the black people about God and curing their bodily diseases. I'll not go back until I'm dead. When I am dead, then I want to go home to be buried in England." So Stanley had to return without him.

     Two years after that, with no one around him but black men, Livingstone died. He was on his knees at prayer when his black servant boy found him dead. All the black men loved him, and knowing that he wanted to be buried in England, they prepared his body by the sort of embalming they knew and bore it on their shoulders for eight hundred miles-it took two months-until they reached the coast. There they signaled a passing ship and asked that his body be taken to England. In England he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where the famous and great men of the World are buried.
     Livingstone was so beloved by the black men that anything he told them to do they would do. His was a magic name. He made black people Christians.


     There was an Arab chief with the funny name Tippoo Tib who used to catch black men as if they were wild animals, chain them, and ship them to other countries to be made slaves. Livingstone with his black men fought Tippoo Tib year after year, until at last he put an end to Tippoo Tib's slave business. This is one of the big things Livingstone did.

     Another thing Livingstone did was to make maps of the parts of Africa that no one knew about. He found the greatest waterfall in the World. These falls are twice as high and twice as broad as our Niagara Falls. The falls can be heard twenty miles away. He heard them sounding and resounding long before he reached them and asked the natives what the sound was. They said they are the falls of "sounding mist." He named them Victoria after the Queen of England, who was then living. The Victoria Falls are in the River Zambezi. Far north of Victoria Falls is a lake which is also called Victoria. Victoria Lake is where the Nile begins. The Egyptians had known the Nile River, of course, some three or four thousand years before Christ, but none knew where the Nile began. It might have started in Heaven for all they knew.