(浙江)浙江省2015-2016学年高中英语 Unit1 Tales of the unexplained Yeti素材.docVIP

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 (theres 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,