听力文本

The Land in the Sky

THE lowest country in Europe is Holland.

The highest country in Europe is the land of the Swiss people, called Switzerland.

There is hardly a hill in the whole of Holland. The country is as flat as a ball-field.

There is hardly a hill in the whole of Switzerland. The hills are all mountains—the highest mountains in western Europe—mountains so high that there is snow on their tops all the year round, in summer as well as winter. They are called the Alps.

But you can’t have a hole in a doughnut without the doughnut, and so you can’t have a mountain without a valley. The mountain tops in Switzerland are white, but the valleys are green, and cows with tinkling bells graze over the fields. The melting snow from the mountain tops makes beautiful waterfalls and babbling, tinkling brooks in the valleys.

Have you ever seen the snow on the roof of a house suddenly slide off and fall to the ground? That is called an avalanche. But suppose the roof of the house were a mile long like the side of a mountain, and suddenly the snow covering it slipped and fell into the valley beneath. That is an avalanche such as they have in Switzerland; and sometimes avalanches bury people and houses and even whole villages beneath.

Some long and wide valleys are filled with snow that has turned to ice. The ice filling these long valleys, like a river frozen to the bottom, is called a glacier, and the biggest of these glaciers have names just as rivers have.

Most rivers start from springs, but in Switzerland they usually start from the melting ice under a glacier. One of these big glaciers in Switzerland is called the Rhône Glacier. From under the end of the Rhône Glacier, as from an ice cave, flows a cold stream of melting ice. This stream grows larger and larger as it flows on down the valley and is joined by other streams of melted snow and ice. It is then called the Rhône River. It runs on until it reaches a big, broad valley, which it fills and forms a lake—the largest lake in Switzerland—called Lake Geneva.

The Rhône flows out again on the other side of Lake Geneva, down through France past Lyons and the mulberry-trees and silkworm farms and silk manufactories I told you about, and at last empties into the Mediterranean Sea.

参考译文

天空之国

欧洲地势最低的国家是荷兰。

欧洲地势最高的国家是瑞士。

荷兰几乎连一座小山都没有。整个国家就像球场一样平坦。

瑞士也是几乎连一座小山都没有。那里的山全都是高山—西欧最高的山脉—这些高山山顶一年四季白雪皑皑。这些山叫阿尔卑斯山脉。

但要做炸面圈就得有炸面圈中间的洞，因此有山的地方肯定就有山谷。瑞士山脉的山顶都是白色的，但山谷是绿色的，奶牛戴着叮当响的铃儿在田野里吃草。

融化的雪水从山顶流下，形成了美丽的瀑布和潺潺的溪流。你见过屋顶的积雪突然滑下来，整个掉到地面上吗？这样的现象叫雪崩。想象一下，如果屋顶有1英里长，像山坡一样，覆盖在上面的雪突然全部滑下来落到下面的山谷里。瑞士就会发生这样的雪崩；有时雪崩会把山谷里的人和房屋甚至整个村庄都埋进去。

有些又长又宽的山谷里满是已经冻成冰的积雪，就像一条河从河面到河床全部结成了冰，这些山谷里的冰叫做冰川，其中一些最大的冰川像河流一样也有名字。

大多数河流发源于泉水，而瑞士的河流通常源于冰川底部融化的冰水。瑞士最大的冰川之一叫“罗讷冰川”。就像从一个冰洞里流出水一样，从罗讷冰川的尽头的下面流出一股融化的冰水形成小溪。这条小溪顺着山谷向下流淌，其他冰雪融化的小溪与它汇合在一起形成一条越来越宽的河。这条河于是就叫做“罗讷河”。罗讷河不断向前流，最后流入一个又大又宽的山谷，河水注满山谷形成一个湖—瑞士最大的湖—叫做“日内瓦湖”。

罗讷河从日内瓦湖的另一侧又流出去，奔腾而下，穿过法国，流经里昂，我在前面说过里昂的丝绸业，罗讷河流过那些桑树林、养蚕农场和丝绸工厂，最后流入地中海。