Открытие Америки. Discovering America.
материал для подготовки к егэ (гиа) на тему

Подготовка к ЕГЭ. Чтение.

Предлагаю интереснейший текст для чтения. Можно одним выстрелом убить двух, нет – трёх зайцев. А именно: 1) задания составлены в формате ЕГЭ. 2) текст интересен с точки зрения страноведения – истории  США  3) это очень хорошая литература – несколько адаптированный отрывок из книги Билла Брайсона “Made in America”. Наконец, приводимые Брайсоном факты поучительны в плане обществоведения – история любой страны включает в себя мифы.  Но как они создаются – вот вопрос.

Discovering America.

    No one knows who the first European visitors to the New World were.  The Vikings are said to have reached it in about AD 1000. But an ancient Latin text  has been uncovered that says that an Irish saint had made a seven-year  voyage some four centuries before the Viking set their foot on the land. The fact of the numerous visitors, the predecessor of the Vikings, is proved by the Vikings sagas which tell of “wild white people “ , and Columbus’s men’s stories that  mention some people looking like “the Caucasians, wearing poles with white rags” (could they have been ancient Celts?) found on the unknown continent. Even allowing for the fact it was done in small, open boats, crossing the Atlantic in the Middle Ages was  dangerous but quite  possible because of the islands that might have served as stepping stones – Iceland, Greenland, Baffin island.  Greenland was the Vikings’ colony. But it lacked wood with which to build ships. So the Vikings went further west.  (1)  The word was a mistranslation: “Vinber”, the Viking word for grapes, could be used to describe other fruits -–cranberries, gooseberries, red currants – that might have been found at these northern latitudes. Or it might have been a propaganda to encourage new settlements.

     Some time after 1408 the Vikings disappeared from Greenland. They may have settled in  North America -  a stone,  covered with runic inscriptions, describing a party of thirty Vikings,  found in 1363 in Minnesota; and some members of the tribe of the Inuits living in North Canada – the place so remote it was discovered only in the early XXth century – looking European- might serve as evidence to  this.

   (2)    Columbus made his voyage in 1492. He spent eight years sailing  round the Caribbean islands and the coast of South America. And he always thought that Japan was somewhere nearby. To his dying day he insisted that Cuba was a part of Asia and the name he gave to the natives was Indios ( the people of India). After eight years of  voyages he was relieved of his post as Admiral of the Ocean Sea, returned to Spain in chains and sank into obscurity. His case was  not an exception. Scores of  travellers went  to America looking for wealth, eternal youth, or a shortcut to the Orient and found misery or death . Walter Raleigh  twice attempted a settlement in Virginia and lost a fortune and a head in the end. Henry Hudson made two voyages to America hoping to find a sea path to China. He was the first to discover the river ( now known as the Hudson river) and the bay ( also called after him). (3)

   Vespucci, known to everybody, as the man whom the  continent was called after, did make some voyages to the New World, but always as a passenger. Yet in 1504 – 1505 there began circulating in Florence some letters ( of unknown authorship) which stated that Vespucci had not only been the captain of the ship that had made these voyages but actually had discovered the New World.  (4) In the course of his research he came upon these letters and named the continent in Vespucci’s honour: Amerigo, Vespucci’s name was Americus in Latin, but since Asia and Europe were feminine, Americus was transformed likewise into America.

    John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), an Italian mariner, sailed from Bristol in 1495 and discovered “Newfoundland” He was the first to set foot on the land that became  later the USA. He was following the course of the English fishing fleets. Or possibly  it was vice versa.

    Anyway, by the early 1500 the Atlantic was thick with the vessels. Some English ships were preying on the Spanish treasure ships. Francis Drake, on a single voyage returned to England with 60 million dollars’ worth  prey. On the same voyage he put ashore in the land (now known as Virginia) and claimed it for the British crown. Queen Elizabeth I decided it might be an idea to establish a colony there. She gave the task to Sir Walter Raleigh who set on his voyage in 1587. The result was the “lost colony” of Roanoke with 114 people as the first colonists. (5) Other settlements followed. Mostly what originally  drew the English to the New World was the fishing.

         The peopling of America was one of the great mass migrations in recorded history. Men have come to America from many nations and for many reasons: some  came for economic advancement, others for adventure, some for religious freedom. There were those who came for political reasons, though few were political refugees. Finally, some men came merely out of curiosity.

    Spaniards made their first permanent settlement in North America in Florida in the late XVIth century.

      The first English colonists came on a wave of exploration and adventure during the reign of Elizabeth I. They had little idea of the living conditions in the new world and died in scores. The first permanent  British colony was Jamestown, Virginia. It started in 1607 and after a little while became a successful agricultural community. Leaders of religious groups from England established colonies in New England in the 1620s and the 1630s.

  (6) She was not American, but Welsh, and indeed she had never been to America and appears to have known next to nothing about it. It just happened that one day in 1826 her local grocer in North Wales wrapped her purchases in a sheet of two-year old newspaper from Massachusetts. There was an article there devoted to a founders’ day celebration in Plymouth. It was probably the first time she had heard of the “Mayflower” and she felt inspired. She dashed off  the following poem:

The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.

  The breaking waves dashed high

   On a stern and rock-bound coast,

   And the woods, against a stormy sky,

  Their giant branches toss’d.

   And the heavy night hung dark

   The hills and water o’er

   When a band of exiles moored their bark

   On the wild New England shore…”

   The poem became an instant classic and formed the essential image of “The Mayflower” landing that most Americans carry with them to this day.

   However,  “Mayflower” was not a bark, but a small vessel about the size of a modern double-decker bus.  (7) And finally it  is quite impossible to moor on the Plymouth Rock.

    In this way or another, «The Mayflower” ship made its landing in 1620. It had 102 Pilgrims on board. The crew called them “puke stockings” ( because the voyage was long and  many of the passengers were sick),  but  they called themselves “Saints”, the other colonists called them “Strangers”. It is not quite correct to call them Puritans for the Puritans  remained in the Anglican church though they wished to purify it. The Puritans did come to America but later. The more exact word for the “Mayflower” passengers would be Separatists. It would be difficult to imagine  a group of people more ill-suited to a life in the wilderness. They found room for candle snuffers, a drum, a trumpet, a complete history of Turkey. Yet they failed to bring a single cow or a horse or a plough or a fishing-line.  (8) None in the party had ever tried to bring down a wild animal. Hunting was then a sport reserved for aristocracy. So they were no hunters. Neither were they farmers since the word farmer in 1600s signified an owner of  land rather than the one who worked it. No wonder, the first Pilgrims died in great scores. By April when  “The Mayflower” ship set sail back to England, there were only 54 people left.

   The survivors tried to make contact with the natives but every time the Natives ran off. Then, one day a young brave man approached a party of pilgrims. His name was Samoset and he was a stranger in the region but he had a friend named Tisquantum from the local Wampanoag tribe to whom he introduced the white colonists. Samoset and Tisquantum became the Pilgrims friends and before long the Natives and the colonists were sitting down to a cordial Thanksgiving feast. The natives  showed the white settlers how to plant corn, catch wild fowl and many other things.

   However, on the whole, confused and easily frightened, the early colonists often attacked the native Americans. One of their first  major “errors” was the plundering of the Indian graves. (9) They regarded the Natives to be inferior creatures and did not hesitate to show shocking  severity. One of the messages  to the governor of the Massachusetts Bay  Colony says: «this aforesaid Indian was ordered to be torn to pieces by dogs, and so she was dealt with”. William Bradford in his  “History of Plymouth Plantation” describes a surprise attack on a  Pequot village (it should be noted that the victims of such attacks were often women and children): “Those who escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with rapiers, so they were quickly dispatched… It was a fearful sight, to see them thus frying in the fire and horrible was the  stink and scent there of, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice”.

   Sometimes the early explorers took the Native Americans back to Europe with them. Such had been the fate of the heroic Squonto. He had been picked up by a seafarer in 1605 and carried off to England. There he had spent nine years working at various jobs before returning to the New World as an interpreter for John Smith on a whaling expedition.(By the way, it was this John Smith who invented the term “New England”) in 1613.  As reward for his help Smith gave him liberty. But no sooner had Squonto been returned to his tribe he and nineteen of his fellows were kidnapped by another Englishman who carried them off to Malaga and sold them there as slaves. Squonto worked as a house servant in Spain before he managed to escape to England where he worked for a time for a merchant in London. Finally, in 1619 he returned to the New World on another exploratory expedition. He had been away for nearly fifteen years and when he returned he found that only a short while before his tribe had been wiped out by small pox introduced by the visiting sailors.

   (10) But something had changed by 1644 – and this was tobacco( a Spanish word for the  Arabic “tabaq”), The first portion was brought to England in 1565 where it quickly caught on in a big way. Fortunes were to be made in Virginia and people began to flock the New World in numbers the Natives couldn’t cope with.

   Englishmen settled Maryland and Pennsylvania. The Dutch  founded New Amsterdam as a trading center and the French established New France in Canada and explored much of the American territory – the Great Lakes and the Mississippi and St Lawrence Rivers – and set up some trading posts there. The Dutch and the French came to America largely for economic reasons. The Germans came there to gain religious freedom and the Scottish and the Irish to escape political oppression at home.

        By 1790 about four million colonists lived  America and half were of English origin.

As  early as 1643, just  twenty two years after the Pilgrim Fathers first planted their feet on American soil with a view of making the world a better place, New England colonists were engaged in slave trade – an enterprise that would make them very rich indeed.

   The Africans had begun arriving as early as 1619. They were much more useful field workers and household servants that the Natives who had died like flies. Their  removal to America was involuntary and at first they were regarded as “servants” with the same right as  Indentured whites . The  irony is that all indentured servants: white and black alike – were called  Slaves. (11) They signed indentures before leaving the Old  World which bound them to serve some master in America for seven years. The owner or the master sold them in America  to someone else. Or they  were passed to “soul drivers” – speculators who drove them through the country like the cattle.

   The language.

   In terms of the language the Pilgrims could scarcely have chosen a more exciting time to come. It was after all the age of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, Francis Bacon and Ben Johnson.

   Just in a century before England gained 10 000 additional words ( Shakespeare alone created 2 000). About half of them are still used.

   Where they could the first colonists stuck to the words of the Old World. For example the word “fall” for “autumn” remained in common use in England until the  second half of the XIXth century. Why it died out there is unknown. The list of archaisms is endless: “cabin” for a humble dwelling; “bug” for any insect; “hog” for a pig; “junk” for rubbish; “closet” for a cupboard; “livestock” for “cattle; “gap” for the interval; “back and forth”, “maybe”, “copious”, “chore”, “trash”, “din” and many others.

   (12)  Sometimes they gave the new creatures and plants the  name imitative of the sounds they made: whippoorwill or katydid , for instance. Sometimes they formed a new compound word from two familiar words: eggplant, canvasback, rattlesnake, bluegrass, catfish, bullfrog, underbrush, frostbite, bobcat, glowworm, They used this method later for : sidewalk, skyscraper, drugstore, hangover, rubdown, blowout, etc.

   They also borrowed words from the Native Americans, though many of them were difficult to pronounce: moccasin, tomahawk, hickory, powwow, wigwam, and many others.  

( From “Made in America” by Bill Bryson)

(A)  An instructor at a small college in France Martin Waldseemuller was working on a revised edition of Ptolemy’s works and decided to freshen it with a new map of the world.

(B) The image of the spiritual founding of America that generations of the Americans have grown up with, was created oddly enough by a lady, whose name was Felicia Dorothea Hemans.

( C )  By the early XIVth century the Vinland map had been circulating in Europe and the course that Columbus set was to the mystical island of Antilla, featured on this map

( D ) Among the professions represented were tailors, a printer, a shop-keeper, a hatter.

(E) The white slaves were convicts or non-English poor wretches: French< German, Scottish and Irish artisans and peasants, unable to pay their passage to America.

( F )  And it was not night when they moored. In fact Plymouth was not their first landing site but the fourth.

( G )  Very often the white settlers attacked friendly tribes mistaking them for the hostile ones and even when they knew the tribes to be friendly they sometimes took hostages in the perverted belief that this would keep them respectful.

( H )  The region which is now known as America was called Vinland by them

( possibly “Newfoundland”).

( I ) Naturally the Natives withdrew their good will and killed lots of colonists in return.

( J )  However, because of the war with Spain no English ship was able to come to America for  three years. When at last the relief ship came, it found the colony deserted.

( K )  Yet everywhere they turned in the new-foundland, the early colonists confronted with objects they had never seen: mosquito, persimmon, poison ivy.

( l ) On his second voyage the crew of the ship made a rebellion and put the captain and his son in an open boat in the Hudson bay and left them there to perish.