長江(The Yangtze River)
長江(The Yangtze River)
What a river this must be to make itself felt so far out from land, to so impress its personality on its overlord, the sea. I made a bow to it in my mind, for I felt in the presence of a great monarch. And I was not mistaken. The Yangtze River, as we followed its smooth course up through the immense stretches of flat farm land of coastal China, was one of those rivers which give the impression of being the only true and permanent rulers of the earth.
Rivers perhaps are the only physical features of the world that are at their best from the air. Mountain ranges, no longer seen in profiles, dwarf to anthills; seas lose their horizons;lakes have no longer depth but look like bright pennies on the earth's surface; forests become a thin impermanent film, a moss on the top of a wet stone, easily rubbed off. But rivers,which from the ground one usually sees only in cross sections,like a small sample of ribbon -- rivers stretch out serenely ahead as far as the eye can reach. Rivers are seen in their true stature.
They tumble down mountainsides; they meander through flat farmlands. Valleys trail them; cities ride them; farms cling to them; road and railroad tracks run after them and they remain, permanent, possessive. Next to them, man 's gleaming cement roads which he has built with such care look fragile as paper streamers thrown over the hills easily blown away. Even the railroads seem only scratched in with a penknife. But rivers have carved their way over the earth's face for centuries and they will stay.
長江
這該是一條多么非凡的河啊! 離地面還很遠你就可以感受到它的存在，而且它的個性給它的君王——大海以深刻的印象。我在心里向它屈服了，因為我覺得自己正站在一位帝王面前。而我并沒有錯。 當我們沿它平直的河道而上，穿過中國海岸廣闊而平坦的田地時，我感覺到長江正是那種令人感到它是地球上惟一真正永恒的統治者的河流。
河流也許是世界上各種地貌中惟一從空中看最能展示其莢的地貌。在空中俯視，山脈(因為不再站在陸地上看它的側面)縮小成了蟻丘；海洋失去了地平線；湖泊不再有深度，而是看上去像地球表面上閃亮的便士；森林變成了襯度弱、作用時間短的膠片，濕石頭上的一片青苔看上去似乎很容易便可被擦掉。而河流在地面上看時通常只能見到一段河面，由空中看去像一小條緞帶——目力所及之處河流安詳寧靜地向前伸展著，呈現出它們真正的全貌。
它們滾滾沖下山脊，蜿蜒穿過平坦的農田。山谷跟蹤它們，城鎮駕馭它們，農莊緊貼著它們，公路和鐵路跟在它們后頭追，而它們仍然保持永恒不變，有著強烈的占有欲。在它們旁邊，人類精心建造的閃亮的水泥公路看上去宛如灑在山上的細紙彩帶一樣脆弱，似乎輕易便會被風吹走。甚至鐵路似乎也只是用鉛筆刀隨意刮出來的。但是河流在地球的表面雕刻自己的路徑已有數百年的歷史，它們將繼續下去。
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