Now, beyond having a vague idea that Rhodesia is a frontier country somewhere at the back of beyond, there is only about one in every fifty of the audience who has any definite notion where or what it really is. Picture, then, if you can, a territory about the size of all the Atlantic States, from Florida to Maine, put together, with the dry, dusty, sunny climate of southern California and the fertile, rolling, well-watered, and well-wooded [Pg 206] surface of Indiana; picture such a country dropped down in the heart of equatorial Africa—that is Rhodesia. It lies a little above and to the right of that speckled yellow patch on the map of Africa which was labelled in our school geographies the Kalahari Desert. Bearing the name of the great empire-builder is the whole of that region which is bounded on the north by the Congo and the sleeping-sickness, on the east by Mozambique and the black-water fever, on the west by Angola and the cocoa atrocities4, and on the south by the Transvaal and the discontented Dutch. It is watered by the Limpopo, which forms its southernmost boundary; by the Zambezi, which separates Southern Rhodesia from the northeast and northwest provinces; and by the innumerable streams which unite to form the Congo.
When the railway which English concessionaires are now pushing inland from the coast of Angola to the Zambezi is completed, the front door to Rhodesia will be Lobito Bay, thus bringing Bulawayo within sixteen days of the Strand6 by boat and rail. At present, however, the country must be entered through the cellar, which means Cape7 Town and a railway journey of fourteen hundred miles; or by the side door at Beira, a fever-stricken Portuguese8 town on the East Coast, which is fortunate in being but a night's journey by rail from the Rhodesian frontier and is, in consequence, the gateway9 through which British jams, American harvesters, and German jack-knives are opening up inner Africa to foreign exploitation.
The Rhodesia-bound traveller who escapes landing at Beira in a basket is fortunate, for it has a poorly sheltered harbour and neither dock, jetty, nor wharf10, so that in the monsoon11 months, when the great combers come roaring in from the Indian Ocean mountain-high, there is about as much chance of getting the steam tender alongside the rolling liner as there is of getting a frightened horse alongside a panting automobile12. If a dangerous sea is running, the disembarking passenger is put into a cylindrical13, elongated14 basket, a sort of enlarged edition of those used for soiled towels in the lavatories15 of hotels; a wheezing16 donkey-engine swings it up and outward and, if the man at the lever calculates the roll of the ship correctly, drops it with a thud on the deck of the tender plunging17 off-side.
Built on a stretch of sun-baked sand, between a miasmal19 jungle and the sea, Beira is the hottest and unhealthiest place in all East Africa. “It is one of the places that the Lord has overlooked,” remarked a sallow-faced resident, as he took his hourly dose of quinine. Even the paid-to-be-enthusiastic author of the steamship20 company's glowing booklet hesitates at depicting21 this fever-haunted, sun-baked, sand-suffocated seaport22 of Mozambique, contenting himself with the noncommittal statement that “it is indescribable; it is just Beira.” The town has but three attractions: a broad-verandaed hotel where they charge you forty cents for a lemonade with no ice in it; a golf course, laid out by a newly arrived Englishman, who died of sunstroke the first day he played on it; and a trolley24 system which [Pg 208] makes every resident the owner of his own street-car. The heat in Beira being too great to permit of walking—a shaded thermometer not infrequently climbs to one hundred and twenty degrees; the streets being too deep in sand for the use of vehicles; and the tsetse-fly killing25 off horses in a few days, those European traders and officials who are condemned26 to dwell in Beira get about in “trolleys” of their own. These two-seated, hooded27 conveyances28, which are a sort of cross between a hand-car, a baby-carriage, and the wheeled chairs on the board walk at Atlantic City, are pushed by half-naked and perspiring29 natives over a track which extends from one end of the town to the other and with sidings into every man's front yard. It struck me, however, that the most interesting things in Beira were the corrugated30-iron shanty31 and the stretch of wooden platform which mark the terminus of the railway, and from which, in answer to my anxious queries32, I was assured that a train departed twice weekly for Salisbury, the capital of Rhodesia. I used to sit on the veranda23 of the hotel and stare across the stretch of burning sand at that wretched station as longingly33 as the small boy stares at the red numeral on the calendar which indicates the Fourth of July.
A temperature of one hundred and eighteen degrees in my compartment34 of the sleeping-car; miasma18 rising in cloud wreaths from the jungle; a station platform, alive with slovenly35 Portuguese soldiers with faces as yellow as their uniforms; helmeted, gaunt-cheeked traders and officials, and cotton-clad Swahilis, comprised [Pg 209] my last recollection of Beira and the terrible East Coast. The next morning I awoke in my compartment shivering, not from fever but from cold. Gone, as though in a bad dream, were the glaring sands, the steaming jungle, and the sallow, fever-racked men. Instead, my car window framed a picture of rolling, grass-covered uplands, dotted here and there with herds36 of grazing cattle and substantial, whitewashed37 farm-houses, while back of all was the gray-blue of distant mountains. As I looked at the transformed landscape incredulously, the train halted at a way-station swarming38 with broad-hatted, flannel39-shirted, sun-tanned men with clean-cut Anglo-Saxon faces. A row of saddle-horses were tied to the station fence, while their owners stamped up and down the platform impatiently, awaiting the sorting of the infrequent mail from home; a democrat40 wagon41 and a clumsy Cape cart were drawn42 up in the roadway; and at a house close by a woman in a sunbonnet was feeding chickens. “Where are we?” I inquired of the guard, as he passed through the train. “We're just into Rhodesia now, sir,” said he, touching43 his cap. “This is Umtali, in Mashonaland.” (Now, if I had asked that same question of a brakeman on one of our own railways, he would probably have answered, with the independence of his kind: “Can't you read the sign on the station for yourself?”) “Surely there must be some mistake,” I said to myself. “This cannot be Central Africa, for where are the impenetrable jungles through which Livingstone cut his way, the savage44 animals which Du Chaillu shot, and the naked savages45 [Pg 210] with whom Stanley alternately battled and bartered46? This is not Africa; this is our own West, with its men in corduroy and sombreros and its women in gingham, with its open, rolling prairies and its air like dry champagne47.” Indeed, throughout my stay in Rhodesia I could not rid myself of the impression that I was back in the American West of thirty years ago, before the pioneer, the prospector48, and the cow-puncher had retreated before the advance of the railway, the harvester, and the motor-car.
The story of the taking and making of Rhodesia forms one of the most picturesque49 and thrilling chapters in the history of England's colonial expansion. About the time that the nineteenth century had reached its turning-point, a strange tale, passing by word of mouth from native kraal to native kraal, came at last to the ears of a Scotch50 worker in the mission field of Bechuanaland. It was a tale of a waterfall somewhere in the jungles of the distant north; a waterfall so mighty51, declared the natives, that the spray from it looked like a storm cloud on the horizon and the thunder of its waters could be heard four days' trek52 away. So the missionary53, wearied with the tedium54 of proselyting amid a peaceful people and restless with the curiosity of the born explorer, set out on a long and lonely march to the northward56, through a country which no white man's eyes had ever seen. It took him three years to reach the falls for which he started, but when at last he stood upon the brink57 of the canyon58 and looked down upon the waters of the Zambezi as they hurtled over four hundred [Pg 211] feet of sheerest cliff, he was so awed59 by their majesty60 and their beauty that he named them after Victoria, the young English queen. Before he left the missionary-explorer carved his name on the trunk of a near-by tree, where it can be seen to-day; the name is David Livingstone.
For a quarter of a century the regions adjacent to the Zambezi were disturbed only by migratory61 bands of natives and marauding animals. Then Stanley came with his mile-long caravan62 of porters, halting long enough to explore and map the region, on his historic march from coast to coast. In the middle eighties a young English prospector, trekking63 through the country with a single wagon, found that for which he was seeking—gold. Likewise he saw that its verdure-clad prairies would support many cattle and that its virgin64 soil was adapted for many kinds of crops; that it was, in short, a white man's country. Unarmed and unaccompanied, he penetrated65 to the kraal of Lobenguela, the chief of the warlike Matabele, who occupied the region, and induced him to sign a treaty placing his country under British protection. The price paid him was five hundred dollars a month and a thousand antiquated66 rifles; cheap enough, surely, for a territory three times the size of Texas and as rich in natural resources as California. A year later the British South Africa Company, a corporation capitalised at thirty million dollars, under a charter granted by the Imperial Government, began the work of exploiting the concession5; naming it, properly enough, after Cecil John [Pg 212] Rhodes, the lone55 prospector who, with the vision of a prophet, had foreseen its possibilities and by whose unaided efforts it had been obtained. Such was the first step in Rhodes's policy of British expansion northward—a policy so successful that in his own lifetime he saw the frontiers of British Africa pushed from the Orange River to the Nile.
To hand over a colonial possession, its inhabitants and its resources, to be administered and exploited by a private corporation, sounds like a strange proceeding67 to American ears. Imagine turning the Philippines over to the Standard Oil Company and giving that corporation permission to appoint its own officials, make its own laws, assess its own taxes, and maintain its own military force in those islands. That, roughly speaking, was about what England did when she turned Rhodesia over to the chartered company. It should be remembered, however, that, beginning when the European nations were entering upon an era of economic exploration of hitherto virgin territories, these chartered companies have played a large part in the history of colonisation in general and in the upbuilding of the British Empire in particular, though in the great majority of cases it was trade, not empire, at which they aimed. Warned, however, by the fashion in which the East India Company and the Hudson's Bay Company abused their power, the British Government keeps a jealous eye on the activities of the Rhodesian concessionaires, their charter, while conferring broad trading privileges and great administrative68 powers, differing [Pg 213] from earlier instruments in neither delegating sovereignty nor granting an exclusive monopoly.
The Rhodesia protectorate is the result of the consolidation69 of four great native kingdoms: Mashonaland in the southeast, Matabeleland in the southwest, Barotseland in the northwest, and in the northeast a portion of the now separately administered protectorate of Nyasaland. Practically the whole country is an elevated veldt, or plateau, ranging from three thousand five hundred to five thousand feet above sea-level; studded with granite70 kopjes which in the south attain71 to the dignity of a mountain chain; well watered by tributaries72 of the Congo, the Zambezi, and the Limpopo; and covered with a luxuriant vegetation. Like California, Southern Rhodesia has a unique and hospitable73 climate, free from the dangerous heats of an African summer and from cold winds in winter. Though the climate of nearly all of Southern Rhodesia is suitable for Europeans, much of the trans-Zambezi provinces, especially along the river valleys and in the low-lying, swampy74 regions near the great equatorial lakes, reeks75 with malaria76, while in certain other areas, now carefully delimited and guarded by governmental regulation, the tsetse-fly commits terrible ravages77 among cattle and horses and the sleeping-sickness among men. The climate as a whole, however, is characterised by a rather remarkable78 equability of temperature, especially when it is remembered that Rhodesia extends from the borders of the temperate79 zone to within a few degrees of the equator. At Salisbury, the capital, for example, the [Pg 214] mean July temperature is 57.5° and for January 70.5°, the extremes for the year ranging from 34° to 93°. It is a significant fact, however, that the glowing prospectuses80 of the chartered company touch but lightly on the climatic conditions which prevail north of the Zambezi, a region from which, it struck me, the European settler who does not possess a system that is proof against every form of tropical fever, a head that is proof against sunstroke, and a mind which is proof against that oftentimes fatal form of homesickness which the army surgeons call nostalgia81, is much more likely to go home in a coffin82 than in a cabine de luxe.
In mines of gold, of silver, and of diamonds Rhodesia is very rich; agriculturally it is very fertile, for in addition to the native crops of rice, tobacco, cotton, and india-rubber, the fruits, vegetables, and cereals of Europe and America are profitably grown. The great fields of maize83, or “mealies,” as all South Africans call it, through which my train frequently passed, constantly reminded me of scenes in our own “corn belt”; but in the watch-towers which rise from every corn-field, atop of which an armed Kaffir sits day and night to protect the crops from the raids of wild pigs and baboons84, Rhodesia has a feature which she is welcome to consider exclusively her own.
Though Rhodesia is distinctly a frontier country, with many of a frontier's defects, her towns—Salisbury, Bulawayo, Umtali, and the rest—are not frontier towns as we knew them in Butte, Cheyenne, Deadwood, and Carson City. There are saloons, of course, but they [Pg 215] are not of the “gin palace” variety, nor did it strike me that intoxication85 was particularly common; certainly nothing like what it used to be during the gold-rush days in Alaska or in our own West. This may be due to the fantastic prices charged for liquor—a whiskey-and-soda costs sixty cent—and then again it maybe due to the fact that most of the settlers have brought their families with them, so that, instead of spending their evenings leaning over green tables or polished bars, they devote them to cricket, gardening, or a six-weeks-old English paper. Though nearly every one goes armed, the streets of the Rhodesian towns are as peaceable as Commonwealth86 Avenue, in Boston, on a Sunday morning. Indeed, the commandant of police in Bulawayo assured me that he had had only one shooting affray during his term of office. In Rhodesia, should a man draw his gun as the easiest means of settling a quarrel, his companions, instead of responding by drawing theirs, would probably call a constable87 and have him bound over to keep the peace. Even the rights of the natives are rigidly88 safeguarded by law, an American settler in Umtali complaining to me most bitterly that “it's more dangerous for a white man to kick a nigger down here than it is for him to kill one in the States.” Now, all this was rather disappointing for one who, like myself, was on the lookout89 for the local colour and picturesqueness90 and whoop-her-up-boys excitement which one naturally associates with life on a frontier; but I might have expected just what I found, for wherever the flag of England flies, whether over the gold-miners [Pg 216] of the Yukon, the ivory-traders of Uganda, or the settlers of Rhodesia, there will be found the deep-seated respect of the Englishman for English order and English law.
In my opinion the country club, more than any other single factor, has contributed most to the making, socially and morally, of Rhodesia. Though the American West is dotted with just such towns as Salisbury, Bulawayo, Gwelo, and Umtali, with the same limitations, pitfalls91, and possibilities, the men's centre of interest, after the day's work is over, is the saloon, the dance-hall, or the barber-shop with a pool-room in the rear. They do things differently in central Africa. In every Rhodesian town large enough to support one—and the same is true of all Britain's colonial possessions—I found that a “sports club” had been established on the edge of the town. Often it was nothing but a ramshackle shed or cottage that had been given a coat of paint and had a veranda added, but files of the English newspapers and illustrated92 weeklies were to be found inside, while from the tea tables on the veranda one overlooked half a dozen tennis courts, a cricket ground, and a foot-ball field. It is here that the settlers—men, women, and children—congregate toward evening, to discuss the crop prospects93, the local taxes, the latest gold discoveries, and, above all else, the news contained in the weekly mail from home. Why have not our own progressive prairie towns some simple social system like this? It was in speaking of this very thing that the mayor of Salisbury—himself [Pg 217] an American-remarked: “In the little, every-day things which make for successful colonisation of a new country, you fellows in the States are twenty years behind us.”
Living is expensive in Rhodesia, the prices of necessaries usually being high and of luxuries ofttimes fantastic. To counterbalance this, however, wages are extraordinarily94 high. It is useless to attempt to quote wages, for the farther up-country a man gets the higher pay he can command, so I will content myself with the bare statement that for the skilled workman, be he carpenter, blacksmith, mason, or wheelwright, larger wages are to be earned than in any part of the world that I know. The same is true of the man who has had practical experience in agriculture or stock-raising, there being a steady demand for men conversant95 with dairying, cattle-breeding, and irrigation. Let me drive home and copper-rivet the fact, however, that in Rhodesia, as in nearly all new countries, where there is a considerable native population to draw upon, there is no place for the unskilled labourer.
For the man with resource and a little capital there are many roads to wealth in British Africa. I know of one, formerly96 a laundry employee in Chicago, who landed in Rhodesia with limited capital but unlimited97 confidence. Recognising that the country had arrived at that stage of civilisation98 where the people were tired of wearing flannel shirts, but could not afford to have white ones ruined by Kaffir washermen, he started a chain of sanitary99 up-to-date laundries, and is to-day [Pg 218] one of the wealthy men of the colony. If you ever had to pay one of his laundry bills you would understand why. Another American, starting business as a hotel-keeper in Salisbury, soon perceived that the people were ripe for some form of amusement other than that provided by the cricket fields and saloons; so he built a string of cinematograph and vaudeville100 theatres combined, and to-day, on the very spot where Lobenguela's medicine-men performed their bloody101 rites102 a dozen years ago, you can hear the whir of the moving-picture machine and see on the canvas screen a military review at Aldershot or a bathing scene at Asbury Park. Still another American whom I met has increased the thickness of his wallet by supplying prospectors103 and settlers with sectional houses which are easily portable and can be erected104 in an hour. Taking the circular, conical-roofed hut of the Matabele as his model, he evolved an affair of corrugated iron which combines simplicity105, portability, and practicability with a low price, so that to-day, as you travel through Rhodesia, you will see these American-made imitations of Kaffir huts dotting the veldt.
Though Rhodesia has a black population of one million six hundred thousand, as against twenty thousand whites, there has thus far been no such thing as race troubles or a colour question, due in large measure, no doubt, to the firm and just supervision106 exercised by the British resident commissioners107. Arms, ammunition109, and liquor excepted, natives and Europeans are under the same conditions. Land has been set apart for [Pg 219] tribal110 settlements, the mineral rights being reserved to the company, but, if the native occupation is disturbed, new lands must immediately be assigned, all disputes being ultimately referrible to the British high commissioner108. Those natives living near the towns are segregated111 in settlements of their own, a native under no circumstances being permitted to remain within the town limits after nightfall, or to enter them in the day-time without a pass signed by the commandant of police. Though possessing many of the temperamental characteristics of the American negro, and in particular his aversion for manual work, the Rhodesian native is, on the whole, honest and trustworthy, a well-disciplined and efficient force of native constabulary having been recruited from the warlike Barotse and Matabele.
MORE WORK FOR THE PIONEER.
In the heart of the jungle in Northeastern Rhodesia near the Congo border. This is the sort of country through which portions of the “Cape-to-Cairo” railway will pass.
Highways of steel bisect Rhodesia in both directions. From Plumtree, on the borders of Bechuanaland, the Rhodesian section of the great Cape-to-Cairo system stretches straight across the country to Bwana M'kubwa, on the Congo frontier, while another line, the Rhodesia, Mashonaland, and Beira, links up, as its name indicates, the transcontinental system with the East Coast. Though the much-advertised Zambezi Express is scarcely the “veritable train de luxe” which the railway folders112 call it, it is a comfortable enough train nevertheless, with electric-lighted dining and sleeping cars, the latter being fitted, as befits a dusty country, with baths. The dining-car tariff113 is on a sliding scale; the farther up-country you travel the higher the prices ascend114. Between Cape Town and [Pg 220] Mafeking the charges for meals seemed to me exceedingly reasonable (fifty cents for breakfast, sixty cents for luncheon115, and seventy-five cents for dinner); between Mafeking and Bulawayo they are only moderate; between Bulawayo and the Zambezi they are high; and north of the Zambezi—when you can get any food at all—the charges for it are exorbitant116. When the section to Lake Tanganyika is completed only a millionaire can afford to enter the dining-car. It speaks volumes for the development of British South Africa, however, that one can get into a sleeping-car in Cape Town and get out of it again, six days later, on the navigable head-waters of the Congo, covering the distance of nearly two thousand five hundred miles at a total cost of eighty dollars—and much of it through a country which has been opened to the white man scarcely a dozen years.
Just as every visitor to the United States heads straight for Niagara, so every visitor to South Africa purchases forthwith a ticket to the Victoria Falls of the Zambezi, the mighty cataract117 in the heart of Rhodesia which is the greatest natural wonder in the Dark Continent and, perhaps, in the world. The natives call the falls Mosi-oa-tunya, which means “Thundering Smoke,” and you appreciate the name's significance when your train halts at daybreak at a wayside station, sixty miles away, and you see above the tree-tops a cloud of smoky vapour and hear a low humming like a million sewing-machines. It is so utterly118 impossible for the eye, the mind, and the imagination to grasp the size, grandeur119, [Pg 221] and beauty of the Victoria Falls that it is futile120 to attempt to describe them. If you can picture an unbroken sheet of water forty city blocks in width, or as long as from the Grand Central Station, in New York, to Washington Square, hurtling over a precipice121 twice as high as the Flatiron Building, you will have the best idea that I can give you of what the Victoria Falls are like. They are unique in that the level of the land above the falls is the same as that below, the entire breadth of the second greatest river in Africa falling precipitately122 into a deep and narrow chasm123, from which the only outlet124 is an opening in the rock less than one hundred yards wide. From the Boiling Pot, as this seething125 caldron of waters is called, the contents of the Zambezi rush with unbridled fury through a deep and narrow gorge126 of basaltic cliffs, which, nowhere inferior to the rapids at Niagara, extends with many zigzag127 windings128 for more than forty miles. My first glimpse of the falls was in the early morning, and the lovely, reeking129 splendour of the scene, as the great, placid130 river, all unconscious of its fate, rolls out of the mysterious depths of Africa, comes suddenly to the precipice's brink, and plunges131 in one mighty torrent132 into the obscurity of the cavern133 below, the rolling clouds of spray, the trembling earth, the sombre rain-forest on the opposite bank, and a rainbow stealing over all, made a picture which will remain sharp and clear in my memory as long as I live.
The Outer Lands are almost all exploited; the work of the pioneer and the frontiersman is nearly finished, and in another decade or so we shall see their like no [Pg 222] more. Rhodesia is the last of the great new countries open to colonisation under Anglo-Saxon ideals of government and climatically suitable for the propagation of the Anglo-Saxon race. Though the handful of hardy134 settlers who have already made it their home speak with the burr of the shires instead of the drawl of the plains; though they wear corded riding-breeches instead of leather “chaps”; and stuff Cavendish into their pipes instead of rolling their cigarettes from Bull Durham, they and the passing plainsmen of our own West are, when all is said and done, brothers under their skins.
With the completion of the Cape-to-Cairo trunk line and its subsidiary systems to either coast, with the exploitation of the mineral deposits which constitute so much of Rhodesia's wealth, and with the harnessing of the great falls and the utilisation of the limitless power which will be obtainable from them, this virgin territory in the heart of Africa bids fair to be to the home and fortune seekers of to-morrow what the American West was to those of yesterday, and what northwestern Canada is to those of to-day. A few years more and it will be a developed and prosperous nation. To-day it is the last of the world's frontiers, where the hardy and adventurous135 of our race are still fighting the battles and solving the problems of civilisation.
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swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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boisterous
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| adj.喧闹的，欢闹的 | |
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complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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atrocities
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| n.邪恶，暴行( atrocity的名词复数 )；滔天大罪 | |
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concession
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| n.让步，妥协；特许(权) | |
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strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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Portuguese
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| n.葡萄牙人；葡萄牙语 | |
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gateway
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wharf
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monsoon
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automobile
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cylindrical
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elongated
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lavatories
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| n.厕所( lavatory的名词复数 )；抽水马桶；公共厕所（或卫生间、洗手间、盥洗室）；浴室水池 | |
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wheezing
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| v.喘息，发出呼哧呼哧的喘息声( wheeze的现在分词 )；哮鸣 | |
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plunging
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miasma
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miasmal
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steamship
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depicting
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seaport
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veranda
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trolley
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killing
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condemned
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hooded
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conveyances
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perspiring
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corrugated
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| adj.波纹的；缩成皱纹的；波纹面的；波纹状的v.（使某物）起皱褶(corrugate的过去式和过去分词) | |
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31
shanty
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| n.小屋，棚屋；船工号子 | |
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32
queries
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| n.问题( query的名词复数 )；疑问；询问；问号v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的第三人称单数 )；询问 | |
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33
longingly
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| adv. 渴望地 热望地 | |
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34
compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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35
slovenly
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| adj.懒散的，不整齐的，邋遢的 | |
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36
herds
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| 兽群( herd的名词复数 )； 牧群； 人群； 群众 | |
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37
whitewashed
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| 粉饰，美化，掩饰( whitewash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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38
swarming
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| 密集( swarm的现在分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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39
flannel
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| n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服 | |
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40
democrat
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员 | |
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41
wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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42
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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43
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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44
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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45
savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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46
bartered
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| v.作物物交换，以货换货( barter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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47
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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48
prospector
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| n.探矿者 | |
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49
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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50
scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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51
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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52
trek
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| vi.作长途艰辛的旅行；n.长途艰苦的旅行 | |
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53
missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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54
tedium
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| n.单调；烦闷 | |
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55
lone
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| adj.孤寂的，单独的；唯一的 | |
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56
northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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57
brink
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| n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿 | |
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58
canyon
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| n.峡谷，溪谷 | |
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59
awed
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| adj.充满敬畏的，表示敬畏的v.使敬畏，使惊惧( awe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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60
majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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61
migratory
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| n.候鸟，迁移 | |
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62
caravan
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| n.大蓬车；活动房屋 | |
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63
trekking
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| v.艰苦跋涉，徒步旅行( trek的现在分词 )；（尤指在山中）远足，徒步旅行，游山玩水 | |
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64
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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65
penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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66
antiquated
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| adj.陈旧的，过时的 | |
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67
proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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68
administrative
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| adj.行政的，管理的 | |
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69
consolidation
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| n.合并,巩固 | |
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70
granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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71
attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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72
tributaries
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| n. 支流 | |
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73
hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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74
swampy
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| adj.沼泽的，湿地的 | |
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75
reeks
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| n.恶臭( reek的名词复数 )v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的第三人称单数 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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76
malaria
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| n.疟疾 | |
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77
ravages
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| 劫掠后的残迹，破坏的结果，毁坏后的残迹 | |
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78
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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79
temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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80
prospectuses
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| n.章程，简章，简介( prospectus的名词复数 ) | |
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81
nostalgia
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| n.怀乡病，留恋过去，怀旧 | |
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82
coffin
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| n.棺材，灵柩 | |
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83
maize
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| n.玉米 | |
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84
baboons
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| n.狒狒( baboon的名词复数 ) | |
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85
intoxication
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| n.wild excitement;drunkenness；poisoning | |
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86
commonwealth
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| n.共和国，联邦，共同体 | |
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87
constable
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| n.(英国)警察，警官 | |
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88
rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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89
lookout
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| n.注意，前途，瞭望台 | |
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90
picturesqueness
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91
pitfalls
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| （捕猎野兽用的）陷阱( pitfall的名词复数 )； 意想不到的困难，易犯的错误 | |
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92
illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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93
prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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94
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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95
conversant
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| adj.亲近的，有交情的，熟悉的 | |
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96
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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97
unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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98
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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99
sanitary
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| adj.卫生方面的，卫生的，清洁的，卫生的 | |
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100
vaudeville
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| n.歌舞杂耍表演 | |
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101
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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102
rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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103
prospectors
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| n.勘探者，探矿者( prospector的名词复数 ) | |
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104
ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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105
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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106
supervision
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| n.监督，管理 | |
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107
commissioners
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| n.专员( commissioner的名词复数 )；长官；委员；政府部门的长官 | |
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108
commissioner
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| n.（政府厅、局、处等部门）专员，长官，委员 | |
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109
ammunition
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| n.军火，弹药 | |
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110
tribal
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| adj.部族的，种族的 | |
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111
segregated
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| 分开的； 被隔离的 | |
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112
folders
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| n.文件夹( folder的名词复数 )；纸夹；（某些计算机系统中的）文件夹；页面叠 | |
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113
tariff
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| n.关税，税率；(旅馆、饭店等)价目表，收费表 | |
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114
ascend
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| vi.渐渐上升，升高；vt.攀登，登上 | |
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115
luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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116
exorbitant
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| adj.过分的；过度的 | |
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117
cataract
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| n.大瀑布，奔流，洪水，白内障 | |
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118
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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119
grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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120
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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121
precipice
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| n.悬崖，危急的处境 | |
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122
precipitately
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| adv.猛进地 | |
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123
chasm
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| n.深坑，断层，裂口，大分岐，利害冲突 | |
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124
outlet
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| n.出口/路；销路；批发商店；通风口；发泄 | |
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125
seething
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| 沸腾的，火热的 | |
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126
gorge
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| n.咽喉，胃，暴食，山峡；v.塞饱，狼吞虎咽地吃 | |
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127
zigzag
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| n.曲折，之字形；adj.曲折的，锯齿形的；adv.曲折地，成锯齿形地；vt.使曲折；vi.曲折前行 | |
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128
windings
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| （道路、河流等）蜿蜒的，弯曲的( winding的名词复数 )； 缠绕( wind的现在分词 )； 卷绕； 转动（把手） | |
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129
reeking
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| v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的现在分词 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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130
placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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131
plunges
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| n.跳进，投入vt.使投入，使插入，使陷入vi.投入，跳进，陷入v.颠簸( plunge的第三人称单数 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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132
torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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133
cavern
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| n.洞穴，大山洞 | |
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134
hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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135
adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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