雙語+MP3|美國學(xué)生世界歷史59 “魔針”和“魔粉”

59
A Magic Needle and A Magic Powder
"魔針"和"魔粉"

     ABOUT this same time that Marco Polo returned from his travels, people in Europe began to hear and talk about a magic needle and a magic powder that did remarkable things, and some said that Marco brought them back from Cathay, but now we know that it was Arab sailors who carried many of the wondrous things from China to the Mediterranean, where Europeans learned of them.
     One of these wonderful things was a little magic needle. The little magic needle, when floated on a straw or held up only at its middle, would always turn towards the north no matter how much you twisted it. Such a needle put in a case was called a compass.
     Now, you may not see why such a little thing was so remarkable. But strange as it may seem, this little thing really made it possible to discover a new world.
     Perhaps you have played the game in which a child is blindfolded, twisted around several times in the center of the room, and then told to go toward the door or the window or some other point in the room. You know how impossible it is for one who has been so turned round to tell which way to go, and you know how absurd one looks who goes in quite the opposite direction when he thinks he is going straight.
     Well, the sailor at sea was something like such a blind-folded child. Of course, if the weather were fine, he could tell by the sun or the stars which way he should go. But when the weather was cloudy and bad, there was nothing for him to go by. He was then like the blindfolded child. He might easily become confused and sail in just the opposite direction from the way he wanted to go without knowing the difference.
     This was perhaps one of the chief reasons why most sailors, before the compass was used, had not gone far out of sight of land. They were afraid they might not be able to find their way back. So most sailors traveled only to that part of the world that could be reached without going far out of sight of land.
     But, with the compass, sailors could sail on and on through storms and cloudy weather and keep always in the direction they wanted to go. They simply had to follow the little magnetic needle suspended in its box. No matter how much the boat turned or twisted or tossed, the little needle always pointed to the north. Of course sailors did not always want to go north, but it was very easy to tell any other direction if they knew which was north. South was exactly opposite, east was to the right, and west was to the left. All they had to do was to steer the boat on the course in whatever direction they wished.
     It was a long while, however, before sailors would use a compass. They thought it was bewitched by some magic, and they were afraid to have anything to do with such a thing. Sailors are likely to be superstitious, and they were afraid that if they took the compass on board it might bewitch their ship and bring them bad luck.
     The other magic thing was gunpowder.
     Never before 1300 had there been such things in Europe as guns or cannons or pistols. All fighting had been done with bows and arrows or swords or spears or with some such weapons. A sword can only be used on a man a few feet away, but with guns an enemy may be killed and walls battered down miles away. After gunpowder was invented, the armor that the old knights wore was of course no longer of any use, for it could not protect them from shot and shell. Gunpowder has changed fighting completely and made war the terrible thing it has become.
     Although Marco Polo was supposed to have told about gunpowder and its use in cannons as he had seen it in the East, most people think it was the Arabs who brought the knowledge to Europe. However it happened, we're sure it was in Asia that people first discovered how to put certain ingredients together that resulted in an explosive. It was quite a while, however, before gunpowder was made strong enough to do much damage. In fact, it was over a hundred years before fighting with guns entirely took the place of fighting with bows and arrows in Europe.