听力文本

This doctor found out that what made the Isthmus so unhealthful was—what do you suppose?—nothing but little mosquitos. These mosquitos were different, however, from those we have that merely leave an itchy spot where they bite. The mosquitos down there were of an entirely different kind. Some of them were town mosquitos and some were country mosquitos. The country mosquitos gave people malaria, which was bad enough, but the worst kind of mosquitos were the town mosquitos. They gave people a terrible disease called yellow fever—a disease that turned people yellow and killed almost every one who caught it. So the doctor said I’ll find out how to get rid of the mosquitos and keep them from killing the people. Accordingly, he went after the mosquitos first, and this is the way he killed them. The town mosquitos he killed with sulphur smoke—sulphur from Popocatepetl—and the country mosquitos he killed with oil—oil from Mexico too. Then he cleaned up the marshes and other places where the mosquitos lived and raised their enormous families, so that they had no place to live, and in these ways he changed the Canal Zone from the most unhealthful place to one of the most healthful places

Then, and not until then, the United States went ahead and made the Canal. They didn’t cut the land straight through, however, as the French had started to do, so that the Atlantic and Pacific could run together—that would have meant too much digging, even with dynamite, for dynamite blows up land, and the land has to be carried away after it is blown up. So the United States dug a ditch across the Isthmus on top of the land and used a river and a lake already there to keep this ditch filled with water. At each end of this ditch or canal they made locks to raise ships from the sea at one end, and to lower them to the sea at the other. So ships now go across from one ocean to the other, but most of the way they sail on fresh water, for neither ocean runs into the other. Namerica and Samerica are not cut apart—they are still joined and always will be, until the Creator does the separating.

参考译文

这个医生发现造成地峡如此有害于健康的罪魁祸首是—你猜是什么呢?竟然只是小小的蚊子。然而，这种蚊子和我们平时遇到的那种叮一下让人有点痒的蚊子不一样。那里的蚊子是一种完全不同的品种。它们分成两类，一类是城镇蚊子，一类是乡村蚊子。乡村蚊子让人染上疟疾，这已经够厉害的了，但最厉害的是城镇蚊子。它们会让人染上一种叫做“黄热病”的可怕疾病——患这种病的人皮肤变黄，几乎都会死。在这种情况下那名医生说他要找到消灭这种蚊子的方法，让它们不再害死人。于是，他先去追踪蚊子，然后他是这样消灭蚊子的：他用硫黄烧的烟杀死城镇蚊子——波波卡特佩特产的硫黄——他用石油杀死乡村蚊子—也是墨西哥产的石油。然后他清理了沼泽地和其他一些适宜蚊子居住和大量繁殖的地方，这样蚊子就没有地方生存了。通过这些方法他把运河区从世界上最有害于健康的地方变成了世界上最有益于健康的地方之一。

直到完成以上这些工作，美国才去开凿运河。然而他们并没有像法国人开始干的那样把陆地直接挖通，那样的话大西洋和太平洋就会流到一起—那就意味着开凿工作量太大，即使是用炸药也减轻不了。因为炸药会把土炸开，而炸开后的土必须得运走。于是美国人在地峡的最高处挖了一条横越过去的渠道，利用那里原本就有的一条河和一个湖把渠道灌满水。在这个渠道或者叫运河的两端都建起水闸，一端把船从海面上举起，到了另一端再把船放到海里去。这样轮船就可以从一个大洋驶到另一个大洋，但运河里的水大部分都是淡水，因为两个海洋并没有流到一起。北美洲和南美洲没有被分开—它们仍然连在一起，也将永远连在一起，直到造物主把它们分开。