雙語+MP3|美國學生世界地理66 食人生番的島嶼

     I SUPPOSE you know what cannibals are-savages who kill and eat each other. They used to live on little islands in the Pacific Ocean, which is the biggest, broadest, deepest ocean of all. The Atlantic Ocean has very few islands in it-you could cross the Atlantic without seeing a single island, but in the Southern Pacific Ocean there are thousands of islands, and if you were shipwrecked there you would probably be in sight of one. Many of these islands are so tiny that they are only specks on the map, and some of them are not on the map at all.

     If you could drain all the water out of the Pacific Ocean as you drain water out of a bathtub, you would not see a level bottom but thousands of mountains all over the bottom. These mountains were once volcanoes, but they are now drowned by the ocean. Where their tops are high enough to reach above the water you see islands. In the warm water around these islands live the tiny little sea animals called polyps, which I told you made Florida. Their tiny little bones pile up until they reach the top of the water and form rings round these mountain tops. These we call coral islands.
     On some of these coral islands live brown-skinned people who once were cannibals; on other islands no one lives. On all these islands grows a tree from which the native gets his food, drink, clothing, house, and furniture. This tree is the cocoanut-palm. I have told you before of that other palm on which dates grow. The cocoanut-palm has a tall trunk with all the leaves at the top, and in the center of the cluster of leaves grows a bunch of cocoanuts.

     Cocoanuts are about the size of a baby's head. There is a shuck around the outside, and when this is taken off, the nut is inside. Strange to say, the cocoanut has what looks like two eyes, a mouth and a sort of coarse brownish hair. Inside the shell of the cocoanut is white meat, and inside of that is a kind of milk. The natives eat the meat of the nut as we would bread, and drink the milk, so the cocoanut is like bread and milk. From the hair on the nut they make rope and string and cloth and everything that we would make with cotton or silk or wool. From the cocoanut shells they make the cups, saucers, and all other dishes they use. From the leaves of the tree they make short skirts, which are all the clothing they wear. From the leaves they also make the roofs to their houses. Their houses often have no sides-they have roofs of leaves held up by poles made of the cocoanut-tree, and a floor which is raised a few feet off the ground.

     When the native tribes had fights with other native tribes they would eat those whom they killed. Missionaries went out to teach them to be Christians, and at first the cannibals ate the missionaries, but many of the natives became Christians and almost all have stopped eating people. The missionaries thought the women were not dressed properly, so they made them wear long dresses called "Mother Hubbards," because they looked like the dress that Mother Hubbard in the nursery book wore. When the native women go to town they wear these dresses, but when they are in the country or want to climb a tree for food, they wrap the dresses around their necks. When the white people went to these islands they took their diseases with them, and the natives, who had never had such diseases before, caught them and many died. They did not seem able to get well even from measles.

     The natives live an easy life. They have no money, but they want none, for they have nothing to buy. They do no work, and if they want anything to eat, all they have to do is to climb a tree and get a cocoanut. This is easy, for the trees usually slant, and I have seen boys start at the ground and run up a tree as you might run up a sliding-board.
     An Englishman named Captain Cook was the first person to explore these islands and write about them, so one group of islands is named after him.

     White men became interested in these islands because they found that the cocoanut meat could be sold in their countries for good prices, so they put the natives to work gathering cocoanuts. It was not necessary to pay them with money, because money meant nothing to them. They wouldn't work for a thousand dollars a day, but they would work for a ten-cent string of beads. They were very fond of jewelry, so the white men paid them with glass beads or with victrolas to amuse them. Shredded cocoanut is called copra and is used in various ways. The cocoanut oil is used for making soap and a sort of butter.

     Ships and steamers seldom pass many of these islands, and only at a few of the largest do they ever stop. Many stories have been told of men who were shipwrecked on coral reefs where no one lived, and where they lived alone and waited for years before they saw a sail and were picked up.
     Many of these islands are so small that they have no names. Some of the groups, however, are named. There are the Solomon Islands, named so because the discoverers expected to find the wealth of Solomon there; there are the Cook Islands, named after Captain Cook; there are the Fiji Islands, and there are the Samoan Islands, some of which belong to the United States.

     One of the largest groups, called the Philippines, once belonged to the United States, but now is a free nation. The Philippines, however, are nearer China, and the natives are more nearly like the Chinese. Near the middle of the Pacific are the Hawaiian Islands, which still belong to the United States. In Hawaii are raised most of the pineapples we eat. Honolulu is the capital of Hawaii, and from Honolulu come some of the greatest swimmers. They spend much of their time in the water, and young boys and girls are able not only to swim like fish but to ride the waves standing on a board. The ukulele, which you probably have heard and seen, is a musical instrument with a Hawaiian name. When a visitor comes to Honolulu the Hawaiians throw garlands of flowers called lei over his head, and when the visitor leaves he throws the lei into the water so that he will return some day. There is one word the Hawaiians use very often; it is "Aloha." It means "Hello, Welcome, Good-by, God bless you."

　　Aloha!