雙語+MP3|美國學生世界地理54 獅子和太陽

     HAVE you ever seen a Persian cat? They are big, beautiful animals with soft thick hair. They come from Persia.
     Persia is one of those "once-was" or "used-to-be" countries too. It used to be the greatest country i. t. w. W. , yet many people now do not even know exactly where Persia is and can't even find it when they look for it on a map-for the Persian name for Persia is Iran and most maps now say Iran instead of Persia. As I look around me in my home where I'm writing this, I find, to my surprise, I can count nearly a dozen things that have come from Persia or are connected with Persia, though before I began to count I should have said not a single thing Persian did I own.
     The rug at my feet was made in Persia, entirely by hand. It was woven of woolen threads in beautiful colored designs and must have taken some Persian many months, perhaps a year or more, to make. Some Persian rugs are said to have taken one person the whole of his lifetime to make.

     My wife has a silken shawl also woven by hand in Persia. The silkworms were raised there, the cocoons unwound, the silk spun into thread, dyed in many colors, and then woven into this shawl.
     She has a ring set with greenish blue stones, called Turquoises. A turquoise is the birth-stone of December, and they also come from Persia. In some countries of the East people wear turquoises to keep away what is called the "evil eye." They believe that some persons can do them harm by looking at them, and the turquoise prevents this "evil eye" harming them.

     On my wife's dressing-table is a small thin bottle of perfume called attar of roses. In some parts of Persia they grow the most beautiful and fragrant roses and from their petals this perfume is made.
     I have a scarfpin in which is a pearl that came from an oyster that was brought up from the bottom of the Persian Gulf by a naked diver.
     My bath slippers-big, sloppy slip-ons, with heels turned down-are Persian.
     The electric light I am writing under is a Mazda lamp, and Mazda was the old Persian god of light.
     In my bookcase is a book called "The Rub?iy?t." It is a book of poetry written by a Persian named Omar Khayy?m.
     For breakfast I might have had a melon, and melons were first grown in Persia. Our melons are grown from seeds brought many years ago to this country from Persia.
     What I did have for breakfast were peaches, and these too were first grown in Persia. Peach-stones were brought to this country and from these our first peach-trees were grown.
     If I had a Persian cat this would complete the picture, but I have a dog instead.

     Persia is called the Land of the Lion and the Sun, and the Persian flag has a lion and a sun on it. I do not know why there is a lion, but the sun is on it because the people of that country used to worship the sun. The sun was their god. They also worshiped the stars, moon, and fire, so we call them fire-worshipers, but they call themselves Parsees. The fire-worshipers' chief god was called Mazda and that is where we get the name for our electric-light bulbs. According to their religion, everything that was light was good and everything that was dark was bad. A few Persians are still fire-worshipers, but most are now Mohammedans.
     The good part of Persia, like the little girl who had a little curl, is very, very good, but the bad part is horrid. In the part that is good, beautiful roses, fine melons and peaches grow, but much of Persia is desert. Most rivers get bigger and bigger as they flow along, but the Persian rivers get smaller and smaller and at last dwindle away to nothing. There are a great many mountains in Persia, and when the melted snows come down from these mountains they form streams, but many of these streams do not empty anywhere; they just dry up; they have no mouths.

     Did you ever play charades? Here is a word we used to act out when I played charades, though we pronounced the word incorrectly. In the first act two girls would play drinking tea. In the second act a boy would run across the room. The two acts made the capital of Persia. Can you guess it? It is "Tehran." Another charade can be acted out in only one act. A boy runs across the room and then points to himself. Can you guess this one? It is "Iran," the Persian name of the country.
     The ruler of Persia is called, not a king, but a Shah. Once upon a time the Shah could do anything he wished with his people. He could take all their money away from them and put them to death, if he wished to do so; but all that has long been changed. In Tehran is the most famous jeweled throne in the World. It is called the Peacock Throne. It is made of solid gold and the back is in the form of a peacock's tail studded with rubies, emeralds, and sapphires-red, green, and blue precious stones.


     All jewels, such as diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, come out of the ground-all except one. But one jewel does not come out of the ground. It comes out of the water, out of an oyster. This jewel is the pearl. The oyster makes a pearl around a grain of sand that has gotten into his shell and annoys him. So at the center of each pearl is a tiny grain of sand. It takes an oyster four or five years to make a pearl the size of a pea. In the Persian Gulf the finest pearls are found. The oysters are not good to eat, but are gathered for the pearls that are to be found in them. Men dive for the oysters, staying under the water long enough to go down to the bottom, gather a basket of oysters and come up to the top-as long as they can hold their breath. You can probably hold your breath only half a minute, but a pearl-diver can hold his for a minute or longer, and it is said that some have been able to do so for an hour-but that is a fairy-tale. A little boy wrote this composition telling how it is done: "They clamp clothes-pins on their noses and stuff wax in their earses to keep out the waterses. Then they fasten heavy stones to their feetses and jump overboard from small boatses." Many pearl-divers lose their lives each year. They burst a blood vessel or are drowned or stung to death by a poisonous fish called the ray. But millions of dollars' worth of pearls are gathered each year to ornament the necks and fingers of queens and ladies all over the World.