雙語+MP3|美國學(xué)生世界地理21 南美洲北部

SOUTH AMERICA looks like a carrot, a turnip, a top, a funnel, a leaf, a fig, a pear turned upside down, a paddle, a lamb chop, a leg of mutton, an ice-cream cone—but the only thing it really looks like is: South America. The stem is Panama; the hook at the bottom is called Cape Horn.
From the tip top to the tip toe of South America, from Panama to Cape Horn, stretches a long wall of high mountains called the Andes. It is the highest range of mountains in the Western Half Ball, and it is the longest range of mountains i. t. w. W.
Columbus, who discovered America, had only one country named after him. This country is in South America nearest Panama, nearest the stem by which South America seems to hang to Central America. It is called Colombia, spelled with two o’s instead of an “o” and a “u.”
When white men first came to the northern shore of South America they found a land next to Colombia where the Indians lived in houses built on stakes in the water. This reminded them of a city in Italy across the ocean, called Venice, where the houses are built in the water, so they named this new country Little Venice, which in the Spanish language is Venezuela. Off the shore of Venezuela is a peculiar island called Trinidad. On this island is a lake—but the lake has no water in it. Instead of water there is a kind of tar called asphalt. This asphalt is dug up and loaded on to ships and brought to the United States to make roadways.

The three little countries next door to Venezuela are called the three Guianas. They belong to three different countries in Europe. In fact, they are the only countries in South America that do belong to countries outside of South America. The first Guiana belongs to England, the second belongs to Holland, the third belongs to France.

In British Guiana far back in the wilds is a waterfall nearly five times as high as Niagara, yet so far away from everything that hardly any white men have ever seen it or even heard of it. It’s name is Kaieteur. Just for fun ask your father if he knows what Kaieteur is.

The line around the middle of the World, if there were a line—which there isn’t—is like the belt around a very fat man. It is called the Equator. The Spanish for Equator is Ecuador. Ecuador is also the name of a little country in South America that straddles the Equator. We should expect it to be very hot there, for the nearer the Equator one goes the hotter it usually gets; but most of Ecuador is high up in the Andes Mountains, so high up that it is quite cool all the year round. The capital of Ecuador is Quito, pronounced Key-toe. From Quito you can see two of the highest volcanoes in the World. They have names that sound strange to us; both begin with “C.” Chimborazo is the name of the higher, but it no longer smokes or sends forth fire. The other is Cotopaxi, not quite so high but still very much alive, for fires inside have not gone out.

It seems strange that from this far country in the mountains, from Ecuador, something comes which you eat or drink, perhaps every day—chocolate and cocoa. They are both made from beans which grow in a large pod-a pod as big as a melon. These pods grow, not on branches, but right on the trunk of the tree. This tree is called the ca-ca-o tree. Notice how cocoa and cacao are spelled: See-o see-o-a comes from the see-a see-a-o-tree. Cocoa does not come from the cocoanut-tree. The cocoanut-tree is an entirely different tree that bears cocoanuts but not cocoa.
The Indians of Ecuador are very wild and savage. They are called head-hunters. One family or tribe will fight another tribe whenever they want something they haven’t got—wives, perhaps—or simply because they want to fight. When they kill a man they cut off his head and save it for a souvenir, as the American Indians used to cut off a man’s scalp and save it as a souvenir or trophy. The Indian who has the greatest number of heads is considered the greatest fighter. They often fight, not with bows and arrows, but with huge blow-pipes—as long as a man—using clay balls or little darts which have been dipped in poison. With these blow-pipes they can kill men and animals. These savage Indians catch fish for food, not with a line or net, but by putting poison in the streams where the fish are. The poison kills the fish and they float on the top, but it doesn’t spoil them for eating.

The Indians of Ecuador are the most savage Indians now known, but in the country just south of Ecuador, in the country called Peru, once lived the most civilized Indians ever known. They lived not in tents or wigwams or huts, but in palaces, and they were very intelligent and very rich. They were called Incas and their capital was named Cuzco. The Incas had great treasures of gold and silver, and when the Spaniards first came to South America looking for gold or silver they found it in Cuzco already mined. All they had to do was to take it away from the Incas. This was easy because the Spaniards had guns, and the Incas, who had no such thing, were no match for them in a fight. So the Spaniards won and simply helped themselves to the gold, and made the Incas work in the mines for more. However, the joke was on the Spaniards, for many of their ships sailing back to Spain with their stolen treasure were captured by the pirates.
Many of the Spaniards who stayed in Peru married Indian women, so now most of the people in Peru are a mixture of Spanish and Indian.

There is little left of Cuzco, except ruins of the old Inca palaces. The present capital of Peru is Lima, but Lima beans don’t come from there. A medicine that is often given for fever does come from Peru, however. The Indians found that the bark of a certain tree when stewed in water made a kind of tea that was good for fever. When the white man came, he found it was good for fever too. So now the bark of this tree is gathered and sent to other countries to be used in making medicine to cure fevers. The medicine is called quinine.
In the United States loads are usually carried on freight trains or trucks but in the Andes Mountains they are usually carried on the backs of a little animal called a llama. A llama is something like a small camel without a hump.


Have you ever heard of a man named Simon Bolivar? Probably not, but in South America every boy and girl knows him as you know George Washington. In fact, he is often called the George Washington of South America. Just as England once owned the thirteen colonies, Spain once owned a great part of South America. Then this man Bolivar, Simon Bolivar, who lived in Venezuela, thought, as a great many others did, that Spain was not treating his country right. Bolivar had been in the United States and had heard how the United States once belonged to England and how George Washington had led the revolution against England until the United States belonged to itself. So Bolivar went back to South America and started a revolution to make his country and other countries of South America independent of Spain. He had a very hard time of it, indeed. Again and again he had to flee for his life, but again and again he returned to South America and at last succeeded in making five countries of South America independent of Spain. After he died one of these countries that he had freed changed its name from High Peru to Bolivia, after him. Bolivia is one of the few countries in the World that do not touch the sea, from which there is no way to get to the sea by boat.
Much of the tin in the World comes from mines in Bolivia. Tin pans and tin cans are not made of pure tin—it would cost too much if they were. They are made of iron and simply plated with tin. Pans and cans made of iron would rust and so be unfit for food, but tin doesn’t rust and that’s why the pans and cans are covered with a thin coating of tin. When this thin tin wears off, the iron rusts easily enough, and that’s why most tin cans you see on the ash pile are rusty; the tin has worn off.

Between Bolivia and Peru there is a very large lake. Its name sounds funny, like a person stuttering. It is Ti ti ca ca. It is the highest lake of its size i. t. w. W. I once built a rowboat in my cellar. When I had finished it I found it was so big I couldn’t get it out of the house. So I had to take it apart, carry it outside, and put it together again. There are steamers on Lake Titicaca, but in order to get them there from where they were built they had to be taken to pieces and carried up the mountains to the lake, piece by piece, and there put together again.