雙語+MP3|美國學生世界地理44 裝面包的籃子——糧倉

     IN the north of Russia the ground is white with snow.
     In the south of Russia the ground is black-almost as black as coal-because the soil is so rich, probably the richest in the World. So this part of Russia is called the Black Earth Land. In parts of our country the rich soil usually goes down only a few inches before there is rock or clay, on which nothing will grow, but in Russia the rich soil is so deep that you could dig down in some places three or four times your height before striking rock or clay in which nothing grows. In America many farms wear out, because there is such a thin layer of the rich soil that it is soon used up. This is the case on many farms in New England that were in use two hundred years ago but are now used up, and so little will grow on them that the farmers move away and leave their farms, for they are no longer any good. In Russia, however, the rich soil never seems to wear out. Their farms are thousands of years old and still there is enough of this soil to grow food.
     In the Black Earth Land they raise great quantities of wheat and, as bread is made from wheat, this part of Russia is often called the Bread-Basket. There is one thing the farmers raise that may seem strange-that is, sunflowers-acres and acres of them. But they do not raise them for their flowers; they raise them for their seeds. They eat sunflower seeds as we eat peanuts; but the chief thing they do with them is to press the oil out of the seeds, for this oil is good for salad, for making soap and other things.
     The largest lake in the World is in the corner of Russia next to the Black Sea. Rivers run into it but none run out of it, and so the lake is salt. It is called the Caspian Sea, for it is like a little ocean.
     As the March Hare in "Alice in Wonderland" said, "You can draw water out of a water-well, so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well," and in the same way you get oil from an oil-well. At the city of Baku on the side of the Caspian Sea there are so many oil-wells and so much oil that it seems to get into everything. You see it, smell it, feel it, and taste it. As there are no rivers flowing out of the Caspian Sea, no ships can get to the ocean from Baku, so a way had to be found to carry the oil to a place where ships could come and get it. The nearest place where a ship could come was over seven hundred miles away, a place called Batum on the Black Sea, so they laid a huge pipe seven hundred miles long to carry the oil from Baku to Batum, where it is put into boats called oil tankers and carried away.
     The highest mountains and the longest river in Europe are both in Russia. The mountains are the Caucasus, on the southern edge of Russia, between the Black and the Caspian Seas. They are higher than the ALps.
     Most rivers we say "run," but the longest river in Europe is also the slowest. It is the Volga. It moves so slowly it is hard to tell whether it is going or coming. It "walks" into the Caspian Sea. In the Volga River big fish are caught called sturgeon. The sturgeon's eggs are called caviar, and caviar is considered a great delicacy, though one usually has to learn to like it. Caviar is probably the most expensive food there is-a very little costs so much: a pound of caviar costs almost a hundred times as much as a pound of beefsteak-perhaps that is one reason why people like it.
     The most precious metal in the World is not silver, not gold, but a metal called platinum. Platinum looks something like silver, but there is so little of it that it costs more than gold. On the eastern edge of Russia, which is also the eastern edge of Europe, there is a range of mountains called the Ural Mountains; they are not very high, in fact they are not much more than hills. In these mountains platinum is found.
     There is a peculiar kind of rock found in Russia. The rock is like bundles of silky threads, which can be made into a kind of cloth. It is called asbestos. As asbestos cloth is made from rock it will not burn. A king long ago had a table-cloth made of asbestos. People didn't know about asbestos at that time, so the king used to amaze his dinner guests by throwing the table-cloth into the fire after dinner was over, then after a while taking it out unburned. We use asbestos to cover hot pipes, for firemen's suits, and for roofs of houses, as it will not burn, no matter how hot it is heated. Asbestos is also found in parts of the United States and Canada.