is regulated by the number of bridges and locks¹ which the barges encounter.

4. Two notable canals for ships in Europe are the Corinth Canal and the Kiel Canal. The former was built in 1893 across the solid rocks of the isthmus² of Corinth. Bridges from the tops of the steep sides of the canal connect north and south Greece. The Kiel Canal, which also has no locks, was built two years later and it gives the countries of the Baltic Sea quicker access to the west.

5. Venice, at the Adriatic Sea, is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, for it has many canals instead of streets. Long narrow boats with curved ends, called “gondolas”, carry passengers and goods from one part of the city to another. The gondolas are supplied with lanterns, which at night make the canals very colourful and romantic. A peculiar custom of former days was that the Ruler of Venice used to throw a ring into the water each year to show that the city was wed³ to the sea.

6. One of the greatest arteries of world trade is the Suez Canal separating the two continents of Asia and Africa. As trade with India increased, the overland route across Suez became regular but very expensive. In 1859, the French engineer, Ferdinand de Lesseps, started to cut a passage through this flat desert country. Ten years later, the first sea­going ships passed through the canal, which is a hundred miles long and has no locks, thus completing a direct water route from the North Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.

The journey along the canal takes about fifteen hours and shortens the distance from Britain to the East by about 4,000 miles. The canal belongs to Egypt and is a vital waterway serving the merchants fleets of many nations.

4. The Great Lakes which lie between Canada and the United States have become part of the world’s ocean highways for it is now possible for big ships to sail up the Saint Lawrence Canal to the ports of Toronto, Cleveland and Chicago. A 218 mile canal joins the Atlantic with these Great Lakes which contain half of all the fresh water in the world. There are seven locks, five on the Canadian side and two on the United States side. Bridges needed to be raised fifty feet to allow big ship traffic to pass and, indeed, from Montreal, these ocean-going vessels are raised 246 feet above the sea- level to Lake Ontario. The Saint Lawrence Canal takes the ships 2,200 miles inland, half-way across the North American continent and deep into the heart of Canada.

_{; ;}NOTES TO THE TEXT

1. lock - шлюз

2. Isthmus - перешеек

3. to be wed - быть обрученным

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b) Answer the following questions.

1. What are dams in Holland used for?

2. Why aren’t barges so widely used now?

3. When was the Corinth Canal built?

4. When was the Kiel Canal built?

5. What makes Venice one of the most beautiful cities in Europe?

6. What makes the canals look so romantic at night?

7. What peculiar custom existed in Venice?

8. When was the Suez Canal opened for navigation?

9. How long does the journey along the Suez Canal take?

10. Who built the Suez Canal? •*

11. Do the Great Lakes contain fresh or salt water?

12. Can ocean-going ships travel along the Saint Lawrence Canal?

2. Read the text to find answers to the given questions.

TEXT 9C

THE FIRST VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD

1. What was the aim of Magellan's voyage?

Magellan lived from 1480 till 1521. The first voyage round the world was made by him over 400 years ago. He thought that by going west he could travel by sea round the world and come to the same place again.

In those early days many people in Europe were interested in India. They knew it was a very rich country whose culture was older than theirs. Magellan wanted to find a new way to India. His country, Portugal, did not help him, but he got money, ships, and all things necessary for the voyage from Spain.

2. What kind of person was Magellan?

At last the great day came and the voyage began. That was in September of 1519. Some people thought that nothing would come of it, that Magellan and his men would get lost and never come home again; others were sure that the whole thing would be a success. Who would be right, it was difficult to say at the moment. Magellan belonged to those who stop at nothing and always do their best to get what they want.

3. What did the people whom Magellan met in South America look like?

One day, after a voyage of many months, Magellan’s crew saw land. It turned out to be South America. As the travellers were badly in need of food

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and water, Magellan decided to stop there. With some of his sailors iie'went to see what the country was like. They were soon met by a crowd of men and women, who looked quite different from them

These people were dark and had neither shoes, nor clothes They soon made friends. They could not speak, of course, but understood one£a$other well enough. Then these people went off, but soon returned, bringing with them many different things to eat. In his turn Magellan and his men gave them things which were not dear but looked beautiful. Everyone was well pleased.

1. Why was the voyage to the Philippine Islands difficult?

Magellan did not stay long in South America: he was in a hurry to get to India. This voyage was long and difficult. Islands were few and far between, and the travellers were often in need of food and water. Many of them fell ill, but at last, after many months of travelling, they reached the Philippine Islands. People used to get to India going east, while Magellan wanted to get there by travelling west.

*

2. In what war was Magellan killed?

In the Philippine Islands Magellan and his men were well met by the people. They stayed there for some time and took part in a war between two different peoples of the islands. Magellan was killed in this war.

Of Magellan’s five ships which started for India in 1519 only one returned three years later, after making the first voyage round the world

3. Among the mysteries of the ocean is the eruption of the volcano Thera (sometimes called Santorini) and the destruction of Minoan civilization on Crete which both took place in the Aegean Sea about 35 centuries ago.

a) Read the article and find different scientific interpretations of the events. Which of them seems to yon the most realistic?

^{:1 ;Л/:} • TliXT 9D

^ THE THERA THEORY

This beautiful Aegean island has been charged with an ancient and terrible crime: its eruption supposedly wiped out the peace-loving Minoan civilization on Crete. But the latest evidence says “not guilty”.

In 1939 Greek archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos proposed that the relationship between the eruption of Thera and the destruction of Minoan Crete was indeed real.

He believed in the existence of volcanic ashfalls that blanketed the Minoan fields, of giant waves that smashed Minoan ships and ports, and of

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earthquakes that shook Minoan buildings, toppling oil lamps and igniting

conflagrations that levelled the palaces.

Marinatos’s eruption theory was always controversial and he himself

realized he needed to find more facts. In the mid-1960s he began lookmg on

Thera for ancient settlements.

Hishdi§covery was sensational - Marinates found two-storey houses

well preserved in the volcanic ash.

But Marinatos found no skeletons, apparently because the inhabitants had had warning of the eruption and had fled: and he found no written

records. | ; • .

Marinatos knew he needed help from outside archaeology. So he encouraged a group of geologists and other scientists to study Thera.

Some of the first bad news was reported in the early 1970s by a husband-and-wife team of geologists, Charles Vitaliano and Dorothy Vitaliano. Marinatos had urged them to search for Theran ash at Minoan sites, hoping they would find heavy ashfells dating from 1450 B.C. After years of collecting and analyzing samples, the Vitalianos found ash, all right, but none anywhere near the date that would support Marinatos’s theory.

Not only was the timing of the ashfell on Crete wrong but so was the amount: the ashfall was not very heavy. “The current thinking,” says Dorothy Vitaliano, “is that not more than half an inch fell on eastern Crete”

• where most of the Minoan settlements were - “which was not enough to do any serious damage.”

While the Vitalianos were examining the Cretan ash, other researchers began to reconsider the rest of Marinatos’s scenario. His claim that giant waves set off by the eruption of Thera had pounded Minoan ports on the north coast of Crete was at least plausible: eruptions of island volcanoes have been known to trigger such waves, or tsunamis. The problem was that there was no clear evidence that a Theran tsunami actually occurred; no one had found the distinctive type of sedimentary deposit that the wave would have left on the coast. What’s more, as tsunami experts achieved a better understanding of the physics of the giant waves, their estimates of the potential size of a Theran wave came down dramatically, from a terrifying destructive 600 feet to an eminently surfeble 30 feet.

In any case, the archaeological evidence suggests that much of the destruction of Crete was caused by fire, not by ash or water. Marinatos argued that earthquakes triggered by the eruption of Thera started the fires on Crete by knocking over oil lamps. But as volcanologist Grant Heiken of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, who has studied Thera, points out,

the Los Alamos National Laboratory, who has studied Thera, points out, volcanic earthquakes are usually too small to do much damage 70 miles away.

All these researches raise a question. If the eruption of Thera did not wipe out Minoan civilization, what did? One obvious possibility is that Crete was invaded by the Mycenaeans, or perhaps even by Therans fleeing the effects of the eruption. The trouble with that explanation which seems quite reasonable is that it is not well supported by the mythological evidence. In the Minoan tradition, nowhere is a battle described.

A second possibility supported by some archaeologists is that Minoan civilization was tom apart by internal strife. But this too doesn’t seem to fit the facts. “The evidence is completely in the other direction,” says Warren. “At the moment of its destruction, the society appears to have been a harmonious one.” In the absence of written records, the real cause of the Minoan downfall may never be known.

What we can hope to know about the events in the Aegean between the seventeenth and fifteenth centuries B.C. may never seem quite as satisfying as the mythical possibilities. What we now know is this: A grand civilization collapsed, for reasons that elude us; a grand volcano exploded, but its wider impact seems to have been slight ^Г'^ДЯ

b) Write a summary of the text in Russian.

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