大学英语精读听力预备级 less10

[00:00.00]Lesson 10   The People of the United States
[00:26.80](Adapted from  This is America)
[00:31.48]For over 200 years,visitors to the United States have been trying to explain
[00:39.52]what makes Americans different from the people of other countries.
[00:45.40]Few have succeeded,
[00:48.64]because the Uited States is not like every other country in the world.
[00:54.60]It is a nation of nations.
[00:58.44]   But who were the earliest Americans?
[01:02.67]And how did the population come to be so mixed?
[01:07.81]  The "first Americans" were the Indians.
[01:12.39]At the time of the discovery of America,
[01:16.75]there were about 500 000 of them in the land.
[01:22.70]But when the settlers came,
[01:26.15]they killed many of the Indians and drove the rest to the west.
[01:32.03]After the American Revolution
[01:35.87]people from other countries came in great numbers.
[01:40.60]Unit 1890 most of them came from the countries of northern and western Europe.
[01:48.17]After 1890 the majority of the newcomers came from southern and eastern Europe.
[01:56.11]  Not all of the people came to the land of their own free will.
[02:01.29]The poor and unemployed were forced to move from their villages
[02:06.85]and leave for America.
[02:10.30]people in prison for political or religious words and deeds
[02:16.15]were given the choice to stay in prison
[02:20.41]or leave the country for the new land.
[02:24.56]And several thousand African Negroes were brought in to be sold as slaves.
[02:31.41]  The newcomers brought with them not only different ways of life,
[02:36.87]but also with something else--willing hands to build railroads,
[02:43.81]dig mines,plow fields,and make steel.
[02:49.69]The United States could not have become a great advanced country
[02:55.33]without the labor of the newcomers.
[02:59.59]Without them,too,the United States would be poorer in art,
[03:05.97]music,theater,and science.
[03:10.72]  The United States is truly a nation of nations.
[03:15.76]Americans are proud of it.
[03:19.31]The Latin expression on the Great Seal of the United States reads in English
[03:25.98]"Out of Many,One".
[03:29.63]The meaning of the expression
[03:33.19]is that Americans set up a single national government
[03:38.64]in 1787 by uniting thirteen separated states.
[03:46.19]But the words also have come to mean
[03:50.35]that an American people came out of the peoples of the whole world.