Why shouldn’t those on one side stay on that side, and those on the other side stay on the other side?  为什么两边的轮船不能各自在自己一边的大洋里航行呢？

Well—your mother goes downtown shopping for things to wear and things to eat and furniture for the house;  你想，你妈妈会到市中心去购物，买穿的、吃的和家里用的家具；

so ships go shopping—shipping, shopping—around the World.  轮船也是去购物——运货，采购——到世界各地去购物。

Ships from the countries around the At-lantic Ocean go shopping to countries around the Pacific Ocean for tea and China dishes and silk stockings.  来自大西洋沿岸的国家的轮船到太平洋沿岸的国家去购买茶叶、中国餐具和丝袜。

And ships from countries around the Pacific Ocean go shopping to the countries around the Atlantic Ocean for things they want and haven’t got.  而来自太平洋沿岸国家的轮船则到大西洋沿岸的国家去买他们想要的和自己没有的东西。

That’s one reason why ships wanted to get from one ocean to the other, 这是轮船要从一边海洋驶到另一边海洋去的一个原因， 

and they didn’t want to go the long way round, ten thousand miles out of the way, if they could possibly help it.  如果能有办法的话他们不想绕行那么远的路，漫长的一万英里。

So at last a company of men from France on the other side of the ocean, who knew how to dig canals 最后一伙来自大洋彼岸的法国人开始开凿一条穿过地峡的运河

—for they had already dug a long canal—started to dig a canal across the Isthmus. ——法国人知道怎么挖运河，因为他们已经挖过一条很长的运河。

Now the Isthmus of Panama used to be the most un healthful place. 巴拿马地峡曾是世界上最有害于健康的地方。

The Indians and black men who lived there didn’t seem to mind it, but with white men it was different.  住在那里的印第安人和黑人似乎并不在乎，但对白人来说就不一样了。

One out of every three white men who went there died of fever.  到那里去的白人，每三个人中就有一个死于热病。

The company of men from France set to work and worked for several years on the canal,  那伙来自法国的人开始工作，干了几年，

but so many of their men died and so much money was spent and so little canal was dug that at last they gave it up, stopped digging. 但是死了很多人，花了很多钱，却只挖了一点点运河，所以最终他们放弃了，不再开凿运河了。

Later the United States rented from the little country of Panama a piece of land forever,  后来美国从巴拿马这个小国家永久性租用了一块土地，

a piece of land ten miles wide like a belt right across the Isthmus.  这块土地有10英里宽，就像横系在地峡上的一条腰带。

This belt of land is called the Canal Zone. But before the United States started to dig the canal they said,  这片土地叫做“运河区”。但是美国人在开凿运河前说：

“We must make the Canal Zone a healthful and fit place for white people to work so that they won’t die as soon as we send them down there.”  “我们必须把运河区变成一个有益于健康的、适合白人工作的地方，这样我们派去的人就不会一到那里就生病死掉。”

So they sent a famous doctor down to the Canal Zone to see if he could make the Zone a more healthful place for white men to live in. 于是他们派一个著名的医生前往运河区，看他能不能把运河区变成一个有益于健康、适宜白人生活的地方。