Exercise 5

Journey Up the Nile(Excerpt 2) 沿尼罗河而上(节选2)

Tombs and temples of ancient Egypt follow the Nile well into Sudan. Driving southward and from Cairo into the valley, I entered a landscape that owed little to the present ear. For the next 1800 miles the thin blue ribbon of the Nile, flowing slowly north, unwound over brown soil and green fields, some only a few yards wide, others as broad as an low cornfield. At the edge of the fields, rising in dramatic hills or stretching flat to the horizon, lay the brown barren deserts.

尼罗河沿岸直到苏丹境内,到处可以看到古埃及的坟墓和寺庙。我从开罗驱车南行,进入了尼罗河河谷,这里的景色还没有受到多少现代的影响。从这里再往前1800米,尼罗河就象一条细细的蓝色的丝带,缓缓向北流去,沿途穿棕色的土地和绿色的田地,这些田地窄的不过几英尺,宽的则赶上美国依阿华州的玉米田。田地外边是寸草不生的棕色沙漠,有的地方突然隆起来象小山,有的地方则平平地伸向地平线。

I had the illusion that I was driving through one immensely long, narrow farm. The villages and towns were usually perched on the edge, so as not to waste arable soil and because there was a need, before the High Dam tamed the Nile, to live beyond the reach of the annual floods. The road followed the course of the Nile, now passing through the fields, now drawing a black line separating them from the desert.

我感到仿佛是在开车穿过一个狭窄而极长的农场。大小村镇一般都处在边上,这是为了不浪费耕地,同时也因为用高坝控制尼罗河之前,有必要住得远一点,以躲避每年发生的洪水。公路是顺着尼罗河修的,有时穿过山地,有时像是划的一条黑线,将庄稼与沙漠截然分离。

At El Awamia, just south of Luxor, I watched farmers harvest sugarcane. A village elder, Amin Ibrahim, invited me into his house and gave me a cheerier view of the effects of the Aswan High Dam than I had heard before. “Before the dam we were obsessed with the flood—would it be too high or too low?” said Amin. “Like all the generations of my family back to the pharaohs, I used to plant my crops and never know if I would harvest. Now there is no fear; we know there will be water, and how much there will be. And we can get three crops a year instead of one. There is electricity in our house and to run pump, so we do not have to work the shaduf. We used to go to the house of a rich man to hear the radio. Now, since we grow crops all year, we buy our own radios and even televisions.”

就在勒克索南面的爱阿瓦米亚,我看到农民们在收割甘蔗。一位年长的村民,阿明伊布哈依姆邀请我到他家并讲述了阿斯旺高坝的景况—比我以前听说的更令人激动的场面。阿朗说:“还没有修坝的时候,我们老是惦记着洪水—今年的洪水是大是小呢?”“从法老之辈开始,我们祖祖辈辈种庄稼,但从来不知道是否能收成。现在我们不用担心了,因为我们知道利用水,并知道水量的多少,我们每年可收三季庄稼。家家户户都有电。在灌溉方面,水泵已经代替了桔槔。过去我们常到富人家听广播,现在自从我们一年到头都能种庄稼,我们买了自己的

收音机,甚至电视机”。

Judiciously, Amin conceded that there was another, less happy, side to the story: “The land is poorer, because the mud that used to come with the Nile flood has stopped. We must use fertilizers that cost a lot of money. Even so, the crops are less.”

He led me through fields near his house. The ground was encrusted with salt. “The flood does not carry away the salt as before,” Amin explained. The annual flood of the Nile used to deposit as much as 20 million tons of silt on the fields along the river. As the flood receded, the water draining through the soil leached out the salts and carried them off to the Mediterranean. It was a natural system of replenishment and cleani