雙語+MP3|美國學生世界地理41 魚兒、峽灣、瀑布和森林(續(xù))

     THE "fishiest" city in the World is in Norway on a fiord. The city and the fiord are both called Bergen. The fishermen from the Lofoden Is-lands and the fiords bring their catches to Bergen-boatloads of big fish and little fish, thick fish and thin fish, white fish and black fish-to sell and to ship everywhere.
     Bergen is also another "est" besides the "fishiest." It is the wettest city in Europe. People carry umbrellas or raincoats all the time, for you scarcely ever see the sun, and when it is not raining it is getting ready to. It takes a lot of rain, if caught in a bucket, to make as much as an inch deep of water. Perhaps you have seen it rain so hard that the streets were flooded and at the crossings the rain has been over your shoe tops, but probably it has rained less than an inch in any one spot, such as in a bucket. Of course, when rain runs off the roof and pours down on to the street the water has run together from a large space, but very few cities have a rainfall of more than a few feet in a whole year. Bergen however has a rainfall of six feet in a year. This is enough rain to drown every man, woman, and child in the city if it all came down at once, but fortunately it does not.
     As nearly every family in America has an automobile, nearly every family in Norway has a boat. The Norwegians always have been famous sailors.
     Long, long ago the Norwegian sailors were called Vikings, which, however, does not mean Vi-"kings," but "Vik"-ings, and that means "fiordmen." One of the greatest of these Vikings was a man named Leif, son of Eric, called Leif Ericson. Leif Ericson lived about a thousand years ago. He and his men sailed across the ocean and landed in America five hundred years before Columbus discovered America, but he didn't think much of the country, and when he went back to Norway he said little about it.
     In later times there have been famous sailors and discoverers too in Norway. Men up there live so near the top of the earth that they have tried to go all the way to the top, to the point where if you stood still you would turn exactly around on the spot where you stood once every twenty-four hours. That point is the North Pole. Such men have risked their lives-and many have lost them-in trying to reach the poles. Two famous Scandinavian explorers, Nansen and Amundsen, tried-they didn't lose their lives, but they didn't reach the North Pole, either. An American named Peary was the first man to reach the North Pole. Amundsen, however, tried to reach the South Pole and he succeeded. He was the first man to reach the South Pole. Since then airplanes, and a Norse airship too, have crossed the North Pole, but they didn't stop there. Later Amundsen started for the North Pole in an airplane and was never heard from again.


     You have overshoes to wear when you go out in the snow, but every one in Norway and Sweden has a pair of long wooden runners called "skis," which he straps to his shoes when he goes out. With these on his feet he coasts over the top of the snow, making a sled of himself-sliding down slopes and pushing himself along on level ground with a pole, as if it were a cane.


     Have you ever seen a white blackbird? No one has. Have you ever seen white coal? They have a lot of it in Norway and Sweden. On the tops of the mountains there are vast fields of snow and ice like frosting on a huge cake, but as this snow and ice sinks down to the valleys it melts and the water falls in streams like rain running off a roof down a waterspout. This water falling is used in Norway and Sweden to turn wheels and the wheels turning are used to run sawmills and machinery, just the same as if the wheels were turned by steam-engines run with coal fires. Norway and Sweden have no black coal, but the waterfalls do much the same thing; they run machines, and so people speak of their waterfalls as "white coal."
     But white coal won't do one thing that black coal will do-it won't heat. In the northern part of Sweden there are iron mines. This iron is particularly good for making tools that have to have sharp edges, like knives and razors. But there is no black coal to melt the iron out of the ore, so they ship most of the ore to England, where there is plenty of coal, and there the English make fine cutlery from it.
     Perhaps you have seen pictures of pine-trees in the snow or covered with snow. Anyway, pine-trees and snow seem to go together, and a great part of Norway and Sweden is covered with forests chiefly of pine-trees. Pine-trees-tall, straight ones-make fine masts for ships, flag and telegraph poles, and lumber for building. They also make fine match-sticks, and millions of match-sticks can be made out of a single tree. If you will look on a box of matches that you may find at your home, you will probably see the words "Made in Sweden" printed on it. The smaller trees the Swedes grind up into pulp, which is used to make paper, for almost all paper nowadays-whether it is newspaper, wrapping-paper, or the paper you write on-is made of wood-pulp rolled thin. So the people in Sweden cut down trees, saw them up into logs, slide them into the streams, and float them down to the sea, and there they ship them all over the World. But they take good care to plant little trees for every large tree cut down, so that there will always be more trees.