Strnge lands in english

Páginas: 10 (2279 palabras) Publicado: 22 de enero de 2015
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CONTENTS
Journey to the centre of the Earth

page 4 - 5

Magnificent desolation

page 6 - 7

Stranger in the city

page 8 - 9

These texts are about new worlds and the feelings of the people who
explore them.

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This text is an extract from a 19th-century fantasy story about explorers trying
to reach the centre of the Earth. Axel, who is a scientist, and his uncle have just
come out of a dark tunnel into a huge brightly lit space.

At first I could hardly see anything. My eyes, unaccustomed to the light, quickly closed.
When I was ableto reopen them, I stood in amazement.
‘The sea!’ I cried.
‘Yes,’ my uncle replied, ‘I will call it the Liedenbrock Sea - surely no-one would deny me
the right to name it after myself as its first discoverer.’
A vast sheet of water, the start of a lake or an ocean, stretched beyond the range of sight.
The fine golden sand of the shore was softly lapped by the waves, and scattered with smallshells which had once been inhabited by the first created beings. The waves broke on the
shore with a hollow echoing murmur.

Descending onto this gently sloping beach, about two hundred yards from the limit of
the waves, were the foothills of vast rocky cliffs, which rose to unmeasurable heights. The
massive vault that spanned the space above - the sky, if it could be called that - seemed tobe made up of huge clouds of moving and changing vapours. The word ‘cavern’ does not
convey any idea of this immense space: human language is inadequate when you venture
into the deep abysses of the earth. I gazed upon these wonders in silence. I felt as if I had
been transported to some distant planet. I gazed, I wondered, I admired, in astonishment
mingled with a certain amount of fear.My attention was drawn to another unexpected sight. At a distance of five hundred paces,
appeared a high, tufted, dense forest. It was composed of trees of average height, but
shaped like umbrellas. The breeze seemed to have no effect on them, and they stood
unmoved and firm against the wind, as if they were made of stone. I hurried forward.
I could not give any name to these unique creations.Were these species of plants already
known? No. When we arrived under their shade my surprise turned into admiration, and my
uncle immediately named them.
‘It’s a forest of mushrooms!’ he cried.
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And he was right. Here were pale mushrooms, thirty to forty feet high, and crowned with
a cap of equal diameter. There theystood in thousands. But the subterranean vegetation
was not limited to these fungi. Further on rose groups of tall trees that were normally lowly
shrubs, but here reached a giant size: ferns as tall as our fir-trees and lepidodendra bristling
with rough hairs like monstrous cactus plants.
‘Wonderful, magnificent, splendid!’ cried my uncle. ‘These are today’s humble garden
plants, which weretall trees in the early stages of the world. Look, Axel, and admire it all.
It’s a botanist’s dream!’
‘You are right, Uncle. Prehistoric plants have been preserved in this immense greenhouse.’
‘Yes, it is a greenhouse, Axel, but you could also call it a wildlife reserve.’
‘Wildlife?’
‘Yes; no doubt of it. Look at that dust under your feet; see the bones scattered on the
ground.’
‘So thereare!’ I cried. ‘Bones of extinct animals!’
Straightaway I began to put names to these gigantic bones: ‘Here is the lower jaw of a
Mastodon,’ I said. ‘These are the teeth of the Deinotherium; this thigh bone must have
belonged to the greatest of those beasts, the Megatherium.’

Suddenly I stopped and said, ‘If there have been dinosaurs in these underground regions
in the past, who is to say...
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