雙語+MP3|美國學(xué)生世界地理50 豐饒之國

     IN Sunday school I used to hear of Bethlehem and Jerusalem and other places in the Bible, but I had no idea then that there were any such places with people living in them to-day. But there are. We call the land where these places are Bible Land, because so much is told about them in the Bible. Bible Land is at the east end of the Mediterranean Sea. The northern part of Bible Land is called Syria, the southern part is called the Holy Land, or Palestine.

     There are a great many cities in Syria and Palestine that were alive when Christ was born and are still living, and there are a great many places that are now dead-nothing left of them but ruins. But there is a city mentioned in the Bible that was a thousand years old when Christ was born and yet is still very much alive. It is the oldest city i. t. w. W. Its name is Damascus.

     The main street in Damascus was called "Straight," because it was not quite as crooked as its other streets. On both sides of Straight Street are shops, for Damascus was once the greatest shopping city in the East; the shops are called bazaars. Some of the bazaars are not big enough to hold a piano. One department store in New York would hold all the bazaars in Damascus many times over. In these bazaars the people of Damascus used to sell only things they made themselves. They sold gold and silver jewelry, rugs, shawls, swords, and silks, and they made everything by hand, for there was no machinery. Now there is machinery to make all these things, but it is not in Damascus. Many of these things are now made by machinery in England and sent to Damascus to be sold. Often a traveler buys something in a Damascus bazaar only to find on it later the tell-tale words "Made in Birmingham."

     A white picture painted on white paper or a red picture on red paper would not show, but in Damascus they used to make a beautiful kind of cloth with designs of the same color as the cloth woven into it by hand. This kind of cloth is called damask, after Damascus. White damask has white designs on it and red damask has red designs, and they do show. You probably have in your own home linen damask table-cloths and napkins or silk coverings on chairs, but the damask that we buy now is made by machinery and does not come from Damascus.

     The people in Damascus also used to make a kind of jewelry of iron, with gold designs laid in the iron. This was called Damascene work. Damascene work was much used in decorating swords, and they used to make wonderful swords and knives with edges so sharp they could cut through a bar of iron, so they say. These were called Damascus blades. Soldiers no longer use swords except for show or ornament. Wars are now fought at long distance and soldiers seldom get close enough to use swords.
     South of Syria is Palestine, which is also called the Holy Land. On my map there is no room to print the names of even a very few of the places you know. They would run out into the Mediterranean on one side and into the desert on the other, and would be so crowded together that they would cover the little country completely.

     You see how small the Holy Land really is. There is a town at the top of the Holy Land with a name like a boy's-Dan. Down at the bottom of the Holy Land is another town called Beersheba; so people often say "from Dan to Beersheba," meaning from top to bottom or from one end of something to the other. Between these two towns the distance is only one hundred and fifty miles and the distance across Palestine is only about fifty miles, so that it would be possible now in one day to go in an automobile up and down and across Palestine.
     There are two lakes in Palestine; one is in the north and one is in the south, but both are called Seas. The one in the north is called the Sea of Galilee. The one in the south is known as the Dead Sea, for nothing can live in it nor grow around it.

     The Sea of Galilee is where Christ walked on the water and where the miraculous number of fish were caught. Many of Christ's close friends were fishermen, and He asked them to help Him teach others, saying He would make them "fishers of men." So a club of Galilee fishermen was started and they used a drawing of a fish as the sign of their society, for, strangely enough, the first two letters of the Greek word for fish were Christ's initials. As in Bible times, they still have sudden storms on the Sea of Galilee and a great many fish are still caught there.


     Running from the Sea of Galilee into the Dead Sea is a zigzag river called the Jordan. It was in the Jordan River that John the Baptist baptized Christ, and people go from all over the World to see the spot where this took place, and some to be baptized there themselves. There is always a clergyman on hand, ready and waiting, to baptize those who come. Many people fill a bottle with some of the muddy water and take it home to use as "holy water," or in order to baptize their children with water from the same river in which Christ was baptized. The Jordan is very muddy, because it flows very swiftly and washes the mud from the banks and bottom. It empties its yellow water into the Dead Sea, but the Dead Sea, strange to say, is as blue as the Mediterranean.


     The Dead Sea is in the bottom of a very deep valley, so low that no water can run out of it, as water cannot run uphill. You might think the Dead Sea would fill up and overflow, but it does not, for the air is so hot and dry that the water in the Dead Sea evaporates as fast as it runs into it. But the river is always bringing in salt, and as salt does not evaporate, the Dead Sea, like Great Salt Lake, is getting saltier all the time. It is saltier than Great Salt Lake, it is ten times saltier than the ocean, and of course no one Could drown in it. People don't bathe in the Dead Sea, however, because the water is so salty that if it splashes into one's eyes or touches any scratches or broken skin it stings like iodine put on a cut. There is so much salt around the Dead Sea that nothing will grow there, and even salt-water fish cannot live in the water. We think that the two most wicked cities in the World, Sodom and Gomorrah, were by the Dead Sea. The Bible says they were so wicked that the Lord destroyed them. There is nothing now left of them but desert, with a crust of salt over all. You remember, the Lord told Lot to take his family and flee from Sodom before he destroyed it, and ordered him and his family not to look back. Lot's wife disobeyed and she was turned to a pillar of salt. And a guide will point out a mound of salt that he says is Lot's wife!