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*第二十六篇Seeing the World Centuries Ago

　　If you enjoy looking through travel books by such familiar authors as Arthur Frommer or Eugene Fodor, it will not surprise you to learn that travel writing has a long and venerable history. Almost from the earliest annals of recorded time individuals have found ready audiences for their accounts of journeys to strange and exotic locales.

　　One of the earliest travel writers, a Greek geographer and historian named Strabo, lived around the time of Christ. Though Strabo is known to have traveled from east of the Black Sea west to Italy and as far south as Ethiopia, he also used details gleaned from other writers to extend and enliven his accounts. His multivolumed work Geography provides the only surviving account of the cities, peoples, customs, and geographical peculiarities of the whole known world of his time.

　　Two other classic travel writers, the Italian Marco Polo and the Moroccan Ibn Battutah, lived in roughly the same time period. Marco Polo traveled to China with his father and uncle in about A. D. 1275 and remained there 16 or 17 years, visiting several other countries during his travels. When Marco returned to Italy he dictated his memoirs, including stories he had heard from others, to a scribe, with the resulting book Il milione being an instant success. Though difficult to attest to the accuracy of all he says, Marco's book impelled Europeans to begin their great voyages of exploration.

　　Ibn Battutah's interest in travel began on his required Muslim journey to Mecca in 1325, and during his lifetime he journeyed through all the countries where Islam held sway. 3 His travel book the Rihlah is a personalized account of desert journeys, court intrigues, and even the effect of the Black Death in the various lands he visited. In almost 30 years of traveling it is estimated that Ibn Battutah covered more than 75, 000 miles.

　　練習：

　　1. This passage is mostly about________.

　　A) why people find travel writing exciting

　　B) the literary style of three early travel writers

　　C) where three early travel writers went and wrote about

　　D) how to write a travel book

　　2. Ibn Battutah traveled________.

　　A) to China

　　B) to Ethiopia

　　C) throughout the Muslim world

　　D) for 16 or 17 years

　　3. The books of the three writers were popular because________.

　　A) they listed good places to stay

　　B) they told of strange and exotic locales

　　C) they explained the best routes to get to places

　　D) all of their stories were firsthand accounts

　　4. The overall organization of this passage is through________.

　　A) chronological order

　　B) spatial description

　　C) travel writers' personal narratives

　　D) persuasive details

　　5. In this passage attest means to________.

　　A) give an examination to

　　B) draw a map of

　　C) tell lies to

　　D) give proof of

　　【答案】

　　1. C 2. C 3. B 4. A 5. D

　　【譯文】

　　第二十六篇看許久以前的世界

　　如果你喜歡讀類似亞瑟·弗洛梅爾或尤金·弗多這些令人熟知的作家寫的旅行圖書，那么你就不會驚訝于旅行寫作那悠長、令人肅然起敬的歷史。幾乎從最早有記載的時期開始，人們就發(fā)現(xiàn)，他們對去一個陌生地方旅行的記錄是不乏讀者的。

　　公元前后的希臘地理學家、歷史學家斯特雷波，就是最早的旅行作家之一。雖然斯特雷波因從黑海的東部出發(fā)，西至意大利，南至埃塞俄比亞而聞名，他也借鑒了其他作者的記錄來使他的作品內(nèi)容更豐富生動。他的多卷著作《地理》是唯一一部記錄當時世界上城市、人、風俗、地理特征的作品。

　　大概同時期的另兩位優(yōu)秀的旅行作家是意大利人馬可·波羅和摩洛哥人伊本·白圖泰。馬可·波羅在公元1275 年同他的父親和叔叔去了中國，在那里待了十六七年，在這期間他也去了一些其他國家�；氐揭獯罄�后，他向一位作家口述了他旅行的回憶以及從別人那里聽到的故事，最終《馬可·波羅游記》問世，迅速紅了起來。雖然很難證實他所說的是否都屬實，但馬可的書促使歐洲人開始了他們偉大的航海探索之旅。

　　伊本·白圖泰在1325 年出發(fā)去麥加朝圣，從此開始了他的旅行。在他的有生之年，他去了所有的穆斯林國家旅行。他的書《伊本·白圖泰游記》記載了沙漠旅行、宮廷陰謀，甚至包括他游歷過的地方受黑死病的影響。據(jù)估計，在差不多30 年里，伊本·白圖泰的旅行行程有7 萬5 千多英里。

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