听力文本

India is the country that Columbus was trying to reach by going the other way around the World. When he bumped into America he thought he had reached India, so he called the people he found here Indians. He did not find out until later that America was not India at all, but a new and unknown land, and that the people were really not Indians at all, but Red Men.

India is shut off from the rest of Asia on the north by the highest wall of mountains in the World; they arecalled the Himalayas, Him-al-ay-as. The highest mountain on the face of the globe is in this range; it is called Mount Everest, after an English engineer named Everest, who measured its height. No one has ever been to the top, yet we know exactly how high it is. An engineer can find out such things. He can tell exactly howhigh a tree, a church-steeple, or a mountain is without leaving the ground. This mountain is twenty-nine thousand and two feet high—more than five miles high. The top and sides of Mount Everest are covered with snowand ice which never melts away and will always be there until the crack of doom.

Men have tried and tried again to climb to the top and many have lost their lives in attempting the climb, but no one has ever been able to get there. The top reaches so high up into the sky that there is very littleair up there, and men have to take along canned air to breathe. If they attempt to climb without canned air,they are able to take but a single step and then must stop to breathe many times, like a dog panting for breath, and every few steps they must rest awhile before going on.

参考译文

印度是哥伦布试图朝另一方向作环球旅行而期望能到达的国家。当他无意之中到达美洲时，他以为已经到了印度，因此他称当地人为印度人。直到后来他才发现，美洲根本不是印度，而是一个新的未知的大陆，当地人也完全不是印度人，而是红种人。

印度北边有世界上最高的山脉，将印度与亚洲其他地区隔离开。这条山脉叫喜马拉雅山脉，地球表面最高峰就在这条山脉里，被称为“埃佛勒斯”，是因为一位名叫埃佛勒斯的英国工程师测量了它的高度。迄今为止还没有人登上山顶，可是我们知道它的确切高度。一名工程师——不用离开地面就能准确说出一棵树、一座教堂尖塔、或一座山的高度。这座山峰有29,200英尺高——超过5英里高。埃佛勒斯的山顶及四周都被冰雪覆盖了，这些冰雹永远不会融化，一直留在那儿，直到世界末日。

人类一次又一次尝试登上埃佛勒斯峰，很多人在登山时丧生，到目前为止还没有一个人能够登上山顶。山顶极高，上面空气稀薄，登山者得依靠随身携带的氧气罐来呼吸。如果不带氧气罐爬山，每走一步就要停下来呼吸很多次，像狗一样气喘吁吁，每走几步就要停下来休息一会儿才能继续前进。