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1. In the Jungle Like any out-of-the-way place, the Napo River in the Ecuadorian jungle seems real enough when you are there, even central. Out of the way of what? I was sitting on a D R _ Text 1 stump at the edge of a bankside palm-thatch village, in the middle of the night, on the headwaters of the Amazon. Out of the way of human life, tenderness, or the glance of heaven?

2. A nightjar in deep-leaved shadow called three long notes, and hushed. The men with me talked softly: three North Americans, four Ecuadorians who were showing us the jungle. We were holding cool drinks and idly watching a hand-sized tarantula seize moths that came to the lone bulb on the generator shed beside us. It was February, the middle of summer. Green fireflies spattered lights across the air and illumined for seconds, now here, now there, the pale trunks of enormous, solitary trees. D R _ Text 2

3. Beneath us the brown Napo River was rising,in all silence; it coiled up the sandy bank and tangled its foam in vines thattrailedfrom the forest and roots thatlooped the shore. D R _ Text 3 Each breath of night smelled sweet. Each star in Orion seemed to tremble and stir with my breath. All at once, in the thatch house across the clearing behind us came the sound of a recorder, playing a tune that twined over the village clearing, muted our talk on the bankside, and wandered over the river, dissolving downstream.

4. This will do, I thought. This will do, for a weekend, or a season, or a home. Later that night I loosed my hair from its braids and combed it smooth — not for myself, but so the village girls could play with it in the morning. D R _ Text 4 We had disembarked at the village that afternoon, and I had slumped on some shaded steps, wishing I knew some Spanish or some Quechua so I could speak with the ring of little girls who were alternately staring at me and smiling at their toes. I spoke anyway, and fooled with my hair, which they were obviously dying to gettheir hands on, and laughed, and soon they were all braiding my hair, all five of them, all fifty fingers, all my hair, even my bangs.

5. And then they took it apart and did it again, laughing, and teaching me Spanish nouns, and meeting my eyes and each other’s with open delight, while their small brothers in blue jeans climbed down from the trees and began kicking a volleyball around with one of the North American men. Now, as I combed my hair in the little tent, another of the men, a free-lance writer from Manhattan, was talking quietly. He was telling us the tale of his life, describing his work in Hollywood, his apartment in Manhattan, his house in Paris…. D R _ Text 5

6. “It makes me wonder,” he said, “what I’m doing in a tent under a tree in the village of Pompeya, on the Napo River, in the jungle of Ecuador.” After a pause he added, “It makes me wonder why I’m going back.” The point of going somewhere like the Napo River in Ecuador is not to see the most spectacular anything. It is simply to see what is there. We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place. We might as well get a feel for the fringes and hollows in which life is lived, for the Amazon basin, which covers half a continent, D R _ Text 6

7. and for the life that — there, like anywhere else — is always and necessarily lived in detail: on the tributaries, in the riverside villages, sucking this particular white-fleshed guava in this particular pattern of shade. What is there is interesting. The Napo River itself is wide and brown, opaque, and smeared with floating foam and logs and branches from the jungle. Parrots in flocks dart in and out of the light. Under the water in the river, unseen, are anacondas — which are reputed to take a few village toddlers every year — and water boas, crocodiles, and sweet-meated fish. D R _ Text 7

8. Low water bares gray strips of sandbar on which the natives build tiny palm-thatch shelters for overnight fishing trips. You see these extraordinarily clean people (who bathe twice a day in the river, and whose straight black hair is always freshly washed) paddling down the river in dugout canoes, hugging the banks. Some of the Indians of this region, earlier in the century, used to sleep naked in hammocks. The nights are cold. Gordon MacCreach, an American explorer in these Amazon tributaries, reported that he was startled to hear the Indians get up at three in the morning. D R _ Text 8

9. He was even more startled, night after night, to hear them walk down to the river slowly, half asleep, and bathe in the water. Only later did he learn what they were doing: they were getting warm. The cold woke them; they warmed their skins in the river, which was always ninety degrees; then they returned to their hammocks and slept through the rest of the night. D R _ Text 9

10. When you are inside the jungle, away from the river, the trees vault out of sight. Butterflies, bright blue, striped, or clear-winged, thread the jungle paths at eye level. And at your feet is a swath of ants bearing triangular bits of green leaf. The ants with their leaves look like a wide fleet of sailing dinghies — but they don’t quit. In either direction they wobble over the jungle floor as far as the eye can see. D R _ Text 10

11. Long lakes shine in the jungle. We traveled one of these in dugout canoes, canoes paddled with machete-hewn oars, or poled in the shallows with bamboo. Our part-Indian guide had cleared the path to the lake the day before; when we walked the path we saw where he had impaled the lopped head of a boa, open-mouthed, on a pointed stick by the canoes, for decoration. This lake was wonderful. Herons plodded the shores, kingfishers and cuckoos clattered from sunlight to shade, great turkeylike birds fussed in dead branches, and hawks hung overhead. D R _ Text 11

12. There was all the time in the world. A turtle slid into the water. The boy in the bow of my canoe slapped stones at birds with a simple sling, a rubber thong and leather pad. He aimed brilliantly at moving targets, D R _ Text 12 targets, always, and always missed; the birds were out of range. He stuffed his sling back in his shirt. I looked around.

13. The lake and river waters are as opaque as rainforest leaves; they are veils, blinds, painted screens. You see things only by their effects. I saw the shoreline water heave above a thrashing paichi, an enormous black fish of these waters; one had been caught the previous week weighing 430 pounds. Piranha fish live in the lakes, and electric eels. I dangled my fingers in the water, figuring it would be worth it. We would eat chicken that night in the village, together with rice, onions and heaps of fruit. The sun would ring down, pulling darkness after it like a curtain. Twilight is short, and the unseen birds of twilight wistful, catching the heart. D R _ Text 13

14. The two nuns in their dazzling white habits — the beautiful-boned young nun and the warm-faced old — wouldglideto the open cane-and-thatch schoolroom in darkness, and start the children singing. The children would sing in piping Spanish, high-pitched and pure; they would sing “Nearer My God to Thee” in Quechua, very fast. As the children became excited by their own singing, D R _ Text 14

15. they left their log benches and swarmed around the nuns, hopping, smiling at us, everyone smiling, the nuns’ faces bursting in their cowls, and the clear-voiced children still singing, and the palm-leafed roofing stirred. The Napo River: it is not out of the way. It is in the way, catching sunlight the way a cup catches poured water; it is a bowl of sweet air, a basin of greenness, and of grace, and, it would seem, of peace. D R _ Text 15

16. Out of the way of what? I was sitting on a stump at the edge of a bankside palm-thatch village, in the middle of the night, on the headwaters of the Amazon. Out of the way of human life, tenderness, or the glance of heaven? D R _ S_1 Out of the … What role does the sentence play? In the first paragraph the author asks a question to arouse the readers’ interest and point out the main idea of the whole essay. This is a good way to begin and to develop an essay.

17. Beneath us the brown Napo River was rising, in all silence; it coiled up the sandy bank and tangled its foam in vines that trailed from the forest and roots that looped the shore. D R _ S_ 3 Beneath us the brown … Translate the sentence and enjoy the aesthetic side of English. 在我们下方，褐黄色的纳波河水正在涨潮，万籁俱寂；惟见河水沿着沙岸蜿蜒流过，水沫裹挟在蔓生在森林里的藤蔓间以及盘绕岸边的树根上。

18. All at once, in the thatch house across the clearing behind us came the sound of a recorder, playing a tune that twined over the village clearing, muted our talk on the bankside, and wandered over the river, dissolving downstream. D R _ S_ 3 All at once … Pay attention to the structure of the sentence. If the prepositional phrase is at the beginning of a sentence, the following subject and the predicate should be of inverted order. Note the parallel construction of three verbs: twined, muted and wandered. Translate the sentence into Chinese. 突然，我们身后空地旁的茅屋里，传出了录音机的声音，一首乐曲在村子空地之上缭绕，减弱了我们在河畔谈话的声音，然后又传至河面，随流飘去。

19. This will do, I thought. This will do, for a weekend, or a season, or a home. What does “do” mean? D R _ S_ 4 This will do … Be sufficient in meeting the needs. What’s the role of the sentences? By the sentences the author summarizes the first part and expresses her true and deep feeling: her love for this beautiful place. Translate the sentence into Chinese. 人生遇此情景足矣，我暗想。在此度过周末足矣，在此小住数月足矣，在此安家足矣。

20. “It makes me wonder,” he said, “what I’m doing in a tent under a tree in the village of Pompeya, on the Napo River, in the jungle of Ecuador.” After a pause he added, “It makes me wonder why I’m going back.” D R _ S_ 6 It makes me wonder … What does the structure of “wonder what / why / if / how…” mean? 不知道，感到疑惑/好奇，想知道 I was just wondering how to do it. I wonder if you could post this letter for me. What’s the implied meaning of the sentence? They enjoy the peaceful life here very much and don’t want to go back to the modern world.

21. At the Berezina River, the Russians nearly trapped the retreating French by burning the bridges over the swollen river. D R _ S_ 6 At the Berezina Paraphrase the phrase “the swollen river”. the swollen river: the rising river Translate the sentence into Chinese. 在别列兹那河，俄国人焚烧了涨水的河道上的桥梁，差点将后撤的法军困于河边。

22. What is there is interesting. Pay attention to the structure. D R _ S_ 7 What is Here “what is there” is used as a subjective clause with the meaning: 那里的一切.

23. Only later did he learn what they were doing: they were getting warm. Analyze this sentence. D R _ S_ 9 Only later did This is an inverted sentence. When “only + adverbial” is used at the beginning of the sentence, the following subject and predicate should be partially inverted. More examples: Only in this way can you solve the problem. Only when we had studied the data again did we realize that there was a mistake.

24. There was all the time in the world. 1. Translate the sentence into Chinese. D R _ S_ 13 There was all the time 我们毋庸为时间担忧，可以从容地欣赏周围的一切。 2. What can you infer from the sentence? Life here is quiet, peaceful and happy. There isn’t much tension and pressure, so we can enjoy and relax ourselves.

25. The two nuns in their dazzling white habits …… and start the children singing. Word formation. D R _ S_ 13 The two nuns1 The two adjectives: beautiful-boned and warm-faced are formed by adjective +noun-ed, with the meaning: 身材姣好的，慈眉善目的. Scan the text and find more examples: deep-leaved (L.6) 树叶茂密的 sweet-meated (L.54) 肉质鲜美的 open-mouthed (L.79) 张开大口的 high-pitched (L.100) 声调高昂的 clear-voiced (L.104) 声音清脆的 palm-leafed (L.105) 棕榈叶铺的

26. What does the structure “start / get / have / set sb. doing…” mean? 让某人做某事。 D R _ S_ 13 The two nuns 2 More examples: The news started me thinking. The sudden noise set the dog barking. His behavior got people complaining. We can’t have you going everywhere by taxi.

27. now … now … : at one time ... at another time ... What mixed weather, now sunny, now cloudy. The market is very unstable, with the price now rising, now falling. D R _ word _ 2 now … now Collocation: before now 以前 by now 到现在，至今 now and again / then 时而，偶尔 from now on 从现在起，今后 Now or never! 机不可失, 时不再来! now that 既然, 由于 up to now/till now 到现在为止, 迄今

28. in (all) silence: with (complete) absence of sound or noise 我们不能对这件不公平的事不闻不问。 D R _ word _ 3 in (all) silence We should not pass over this unfair thing in silence. The boys listened to the story in silence.

29. tangle: 1. v. • catch in or as in a net, trap; mix together or intertwine in a confused mass D R _ word _ 3 tangle1 My long hair’s so tangled that I can’t comb it. Don’t move. You’re tangling them up. 2) be involved in a fight or quarrel I tangled with her over the mathematic homework. They tangled heatedly over the problem. 2. n. confused mass or disordered state

30. 他的思想陷于困惑之中。 His mind was in a tangle. The traffic was in a terrible tangle because of the power failure. D R _ word _ 3 tangle 2 Collocation: tangle over 对…发生争论 tangle up 缠在一起，弄乱 tangle with sb. 与某人发生纠纷，与某人发生口角，与某人打架 be in a tangle 纠缠不清，陷于混乱之中

31. trail: 1. vi. 1) extend over a surface We like very much the vines trailing through the garden. D R _ word _ 3 trail 1 The tablecloth trails on the floor. 2) walk tiredly 被打败的军队疲惫地走过我们的身边。 The defeated army trailed past us. 2. vt. 1) drag, pull 被打败的军队疲惫地走过我们的身边。 The defeated army trailed past us.

32. 2) follow the tracks of The policemen trailed the suspect for several days and finally to his hiding-place. D R _ word _ trail 2 The hunters trailed a tiger for hours. 3. n. mark, trace 受伤的动物在身后留下一道血迹。 The wounded animal left a trail of blood behind it. Follow the trail until you come to the camp. Collocation: trail after 追随 trail off / away 变弱，逐渐缩小

33. Collocation: (在森林中)在树上刻出指路的标志；开辟道路 blaze a /the trail 追踪 follow the trail 成一列纵队 in trail D R _ word _ trail 3 失去踪迹；偏离目标 off the trail on the trail 跟踪，追赶 CF: trail, follow, chase & pursue 这些词都可用作动词，都可以表示“追随，跟踪”的意思。 trail 指根据某种踪迹进行追寻。例如： The ground was soft and wet so we were able to trail her to the house. 地面松软潮湿，所以我们能够沿着脚印跟踪到她家。

34. follow 中性词，跟随的用意对被跟随者来说可好可坏。例如： Don’t keep following me about everywhere I go. 不要老是我走到哪里你就跟到哪里。 D R _ word _ trail 3 The dog followed her all down the street. 这只狗一路跟着她沿街走去。 chase 强调追赶者的速度和决心，其动机常为不甚友善，也 可能是出于好玩或取乐。例如： The Johnsons’ cat likes to chase the mice as if it were playing with them. 约翰逊家的猫喜欢追逐老鼠，好像它在跟它们闹着玩似的。 We are trying to chase down all possible clues to the theft. 我们正在设法寻找这起盗窃案的一切可能得到的线索。

35. pursue 不重视追随者的用意好坏，但其决心和速度比较 明显。例如： The police are pursuing an escaped prisoner. D R _ word _ trail 4 警方正在追捕一个在逃的犯人。 We have always pursued a friendly policy towards the people all over the world. 对世界人民我们一贯奉行友好政策。

36. loop: 1. v. form or bend into a loop Loop that end of the rope through this and knot it. D R _ word _ loop 他把绳子绕系在柱子上。 He looped the rope round a post. 2. n.circle She put a loop of rope around the horse’s neck. The loop of string makes a handle for the parcel. Pattern:loop the loop（飞机、风筝等）在高空翻筋斗； （在游乐园）乘坐绕环滑车 The airman looped the loop three times and won the cheer in chorus from the spectators.

37. mute: v. reduce or stop the sound of We muted our voices at the sight of the national flag. 他一声不吭但瞪着他的父亲以表示抗议。 D R _ word _ 3 mute He muted but stared at his father to protest.

38. dissolve: v. 1) fade away, disappear His strength dissolved. D R _ word _ 3 dissolve1 The view dissolved in mist. 2) become liquid 水溶解盐。 Water dissolves salt. 盐溶解于水中。 Salt dissolves in water. Heat dissolved the candle into a pool of wax in a few minutes.

39. 3) bring to end They dissolved the business partnership, so did the friendship between them. D R _ word _ dissolve2 政府解散了该国议会并暂停一切政治活动。 The government dissolved the country’s parliament and suspended all political activities.

40. loose: 1. v. untie, release D R _ word _ 4 loose He loosed his collar of his overcoat. Wine loosed his tongue. 远足者们在营地解下背包。 Hikers loosed their packs at camp.

41. 2. adj. a loose hour 把(某物)留给… a loose package 松散的包裹 D R _ word _ 4 loose a loose woman 放荡的女人 loose coffee 散装咖啡 loose shoes 宽松的鞋 loose paper 散页纸 a loose translation 意译

42. slump: 1. v. 1) sit or fall down heavily She slumped exhaustedly onto the sofa. D R _ word _ 4 slump The boy’s feet slumped through the ice. 2) go down in number or strength Business slumped after the holidays. Sales have slumped badly in the last week. 2. n.general drop in prices, trade activity, etc; business depression a stock market slump a slump in farm prices The slump certainly had some impact on inflation.

43. be dying to do sth. / for sth.: desire (to do) sth. eagerly We are dying to know what happened. D R _ word _ 4 be dying to do sth I feel like a cup of tea but he’s dying for a cup of coffee.

44. get one’s hands on:catch hold of, find or get (sth.) The old women keeps everything she can get her hands on. D R _ word _ 4 get one’s hands on 我是有这本书的，就是现在找不到。 I have the book, but now can’t get my hands on it. NB: get one’s hands = lay one’s hands on

45. take apart:separate into its different parts He took the clock apart to repair it. D R _ word _ 5 take apart When I was a little boy, I liked to take the toys apart and put them together again and again. Collocation: lay / put / set sth. apart for 把(某物)留给… know / tell apart 区分开 apart from 离开；除…之外；要不是

46. spectacular: adj. extraordinary; very attractive or impressive Because of a spectacular achievement in science, he is now world famous. D R _ word _ 6 spectacular We enjoyed a spectacular display of fireworks on Tian’anmen Square.

47. fringe: n. the outer edge or limit of sth. It was easier to move about on the fringe of the crowd. 这是一个很广阔的领域, 我在这里只能谈个大概。 D R _ word _ 6 fringe1 This is an enormous field of which l can here touch only the fringe. CF: fringe, border, edge & rim 这些词都是名词，都有“边界”、“边缘”的意思。 fringe指衣服、地毯或其他饰物的须边，或指事物的最外 边，或离中心位置最远的边缘。例如: A fringe of trees stood round the pool. 池塘的四周耸立着一圈树木。

48. border 指围定范围的界线或最接近外缘的地带，也可用以 比喻。 例如: I could hear birds singing at the border of the wood. D R _ word _ fringe 2 我能听到鸟儿在林边鸣叫。 The refugees live on the border of starvation. 难民们生活在饥饿的边缘。 edge 指任何物体较窄的边缘或两个平面的交接线。例如: I put the cup at the edge of the desk so I can reach it. 我把茶杯放在桌边以便能够得着。 We turned back to the sea’s edge yesterday. 昨天我们回到了海边。

49. rim 常指圆或曲面的边缘。例如: The lady’s hat had a wide rim. 这个女士的帽子有一个宽帽沿。 D R _ word _ fringe 3 The boy wore funny-looking pair of glasses with blue rim. 男孩戴了一副样子很逗的蓝边眼镜。

50. hollow:n. a space sunk into sth. More sand is needed to fill the hollow in the driveway. D R _ word _ 6 hollow Let’s have a picnic down in the hollow.