So we know that the distance through must be about eight thousand miles, as twenty-five is a little more than three times eight. That is not geography; if s arithmetic. If you want to use big words for “around” and “through,” as they do in geographies, you must say “circumference” for “around” and “diameter” for “through” 一which mean the same thing: the circumference of the World is twenty-five thousand and the diameter is eight thousand.
現在我們知道世界是一個球，一個巨大的球，既然它是一個球，那就和其他所有的球一樣，它一周的長度肯定是垂直深度的三倍多點。世界一周的長度是兩萬五千英里，因為人們確實量過這個長度。那么我們就知道從世界一面到另一面的距離肯定是大約8000英里，因為25是8的三倍多一點。這不是地理，是算術。如果你想用大詞來表達“一圈”和“深度”，就像人們通常在地理上用的那些詞一樣，那么你必須用“周長”來表達“一圈”，用“直徑”來表達“深度”—它們的意思實際上是一樣的：世界的周長是二萬五千英里，直徑是八千英里。
The outside of the World is a crust of rock like the skin of a baked potato over the hot inside. Some of the crust that you go through first is in layers, like layers in a jelly- cake, one layer after another, only these rock layers look as if they were made of sand and shells, or coal or little stones, and that's what they ore made of. If you could cut the World in half as if it were an apple, it might look something like the picture on the next page. We call it a “Cross Section.”
世界的外層是個巖石的外殼，就像烤土豆的外皮，包裹著滾燙的芯。你最先穿過的外殼部分是分層的，像果凍蛋糕里的分層一樣，一層又一層，只是這些巖石層看起來像是沙子和貝殼，或是煤炭或小石塊做成的，事實也確實如此。如果可以把世界像切蘋果那樣切成兩半，它也許看起來就會像下一頁圖片上顯示的那樣。我們把它叫做“剖面圖”。
Between some of the layers of rock there is coal like jelly in a jelly-cake and in other places there are gold and silver and diamonds and rubies, and in some of the rock there are pools of oil. That's why men dig wells down through these layers of rock to get oil, and that's why men dig mines to get coal and gold.And still farther down the rock is not in layers—it is just solid rock; and still farther down it gets hotter and hotter where the world has not cooled off even yet, until the rock is no longer solid, but melted.
在有些巖石層中間有煤炭，像是果凍蛋糕中的果凍一樣；其他地方有金、銀、鉆石和紅寶石，有的巖石中還有石油層。這就是人們為了獲取石油向地下挖井，穿透這些巖石層的原因，也就是人們為了得到煤和金才開礦的原因。巖石下更深處就不是分層的了—全是堅硬的巖石；再向下更深處越來越熱，那是世界甚至到現在還沒完全冷卻的地方，直到巖石不是堅硬的，而是熔化了的。
Whenever you see a chimney you know there is a furnace beneath it, and when smoke and fire come out of its top you know there is a fire in the furnace. Well, there are many places on the World where fire and smoke come out of the ground as if through a chimney from a fiery furnace. These places are called volcanoes. Why was the World made of rock instead of brass or glass or china? Why is the World shaped like a ball and not like a box, a roller, or an old shoe?
每次看到煙囪，你就知道下面肯定有個火爐；當煙囪頂部冒出煙和火的時候，你知道火爐里有火在燒。嗯，世界上有很多地方冒出火和煙，就像燃燒的火爐里的火和煙從煙囪冒出來一樣，這些地方叫做火山。為什么世界是巖石做的，而不是黃銅、玻璃或者陶器的呢？為什么世界是球形，而不像一個盒子、像一個滾筒或者像一只舊鞋子呢？
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