高中英语(译林牛津版)必修二教案(湖南专用)案 Unit 1 Tales of the unexplained 背景材料 文章

Yeti: Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas

A tibetian fortress below the mountains were the Yeti is supposed to roam.

The Himalaya Mountains, the highest range on Earth, have been referred to as the

"roof of the world." If that is so, there is a mystery called the Yeti in our attic. In Tibetan

the word means "magical creature" and truly it is a seemingly supernatural enigma in

the shape of a hairy, biped creature that resembles a giant ape.

The Himalayas lie on the border between India, Nepal, and Tibet (now part of

China). They are remote and forbidding. Large stretches around these rough valleys and

peaks are uninhabited. The tallest mountain in the world, Everest, 29,028 feet high, lies

half in Nepal, half in China. It is from Nepal, though, that most attempts to climb Everest,

and the surrounding mountains, are made.

In Katmandu, the capitol of Nepal, a visitor finds himself immersed in the Yeti

legend. He is a commercial money maker for the tourist industry (there's even a Hotel

named the "Yak and the Yeti") as well as legend, religion and fantasy to some of the

Nepalese people.

The first reliable report of the Yeti appeared in 1925 when a Greek photographer,

N. A. Tombazi, working as a member of a British geological expedition in the Himalayas,

was shown a creature moving in the distance across some lower slopes. The creature

was almost a thousand feet away in a naira with an altitude of around 15,000 feet.

"Unquestionably, the figure in outline was exactly like a human being, walking

upright and stopping occasionally to uproot or pull at some dwarf rhododendron bushes," said Tombazi, "It showed up dark against the snow and, as far as I could make

out wore no clothes."

The creature disappeared before Tombazi could take a photograph and was not

seen again. The group was descending, though, and the photographer went out of his

way to see the ground were he had spotted the creature. Tombazi found footprints in

the snow.

"They were similar in shape to those of a man, but only six to seven inches long by

four inches wide at the broadest part of the foot. The marks of five distinct toes and the

instep were perfectly clear, but the trace of the heel was indistinct..."

There were 15 prints to be found. Each was one and one half to two feet apart.

Then Tombazi lost the trail in thick brush. When the locals were asked to name the

beast he'd seen they told him it was a "Kanchenjunga demon." Tombazi didn't think

he'd seen a demon, but he couldn't figure out what the creature was either. Perhaps

he'd seen a wandering Buddhist or Hindu ascetic or hermit. As the years went by though

and other Yeti stories surfaced, Tombazi began to wonder if he'd seen one too.

Yeti reports usually come in the form of tracks found, pelts offered, shapes seen at

a distance, or rarely, actual face-to-face encounters with the creatures. Face to face

encounters never come with researchers looking for the Yeti, but with locals who

stumble into the creature during their daily lives.

Some of the best tracks ever seen were found and photographed by British

mountaineers Eric Shipton and Micheal Ward in 1951. They found them on the

southwestern slopes of the Menlung Glacier, which lies between Tibet and Nepal, at an

altitude of 20,000 feet. Each print was thirteen inches wide and some eighteen inches

long. The tracks seemed fresh and Shipton and Ward followed the trail for a mile before

it disappeared in hard ice.

Some scientists that viewed the

photographs could not identify the tracks

as from any known creature. Others,

though, felt it was probably the trail of a

languor monkey or red bear. They noted

the tracks in snow, melted by the sun, can change shape and grow larger. Even so, the bear/monkey theory seems unlikely as both of these animals normally move on all four

feet. The tracks were clearly that of a biped.

Shipton's and Ward's reputations argue against a hoax on their part and the

remoteness and height of the trail's location argues against them being hoaxed.

Shipton's footprints were not the first or last discovered by climbers among the

Himalayas. Even Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, on their

record ascent to the top of Mount Everest, in 1953, found giant foot prints on the way

up.

One of the more curious reports of a close encounter with a Yeti occurred in 1938.

Captain d'Auvergue, the curator of the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta, India, was

traveling the Himalayas by himself when he became snow-blind. As he neared death

from exposure he was rescued by a nine foot tall Yeti that nursed him back to health

until d'Auvergue was able to return home by himself.

In many other stories, though, the Yeti hasn't been so benign. One Sherpa girl, who

was tending her yaks, described being surprised by a large ape-like creature with black