英语翻译二级笔译实务模拟试题及答案解析(8)

英语翻译二级笔译实务模拟试题及答案解析（8）
(1/2)Section ⅠEnglish-Chinese Translation
Translate the following two passages into Chinese.
Part A Compulsory Translation
第1题
How much money can be made from trying to extract oil and gas from the layers of shale that lie beneath Britain?
Answering that is proving to be a surprisingly difficult scientific question because knowing the basic facts about shale is not enough.
The layers have been well mapped for years. In fact until recently geologists tended to regard shale as commonplace, even dull—a view that has obviously changed.
The key tool is a seismic survey: sound waves are sent into the ground and the reflections reveal the patterns of the rocks. This describes where the shale lies but not much more.
So we know, for example, that the Bowland Shale—which straddles northern England—covers a far smaller area than the massive shale formations of the United States but it is also much thicker than they are.
That may mean that it is a potentially richer resource or that it is harder to exploit. Britain's geological history is long and tortured, so folds and fractures disrupt the shale layers, creating a more complex picture than across the Atlantic.
To assess what the layers hold involves another step: wells have to be drilled into the rock to allow cores to be extracted so the shale can be analysed in more detail.
As Ed Hough of the British Geological Survey told me: "We know the areas under the ground which contain gas and oil—what we don't know is how that gas and oil might be released from the different units of rock and extracted."
"There's a lot of variability in these rocks—so their composition, their history and the geological conditions all come into play and are all variable."
That means that neighbouring fracking operations might come up with very different results.
In a lab at the BGS near Nottingham, I'm shown a simple but effective proof that shale does contain the hydrocarbons—gas and oil—at the heart of the current surge in interest.
A few chunks of the rock are dropped into a beaker of water and gently heated until they produce tiny bubbles which rise like strings of pearls to the surface.
It is a sight which is both beautiful and significant—the bubbles are methane, which the government hopes will form a new source of home grown energy.
The gas and oil were formed millions of years ago when tiny plants and other organisms accumulated on the floor of an ancient and warm ocean—at one stage Britain lay in the tropics. This organic matter was then compacted and cooked by natural geological warmth which transformed it into the fuels in such demand now.
So one question is the "total organic content" of the shale—how much organic material is held inside—and there can be large variations in this.
But establishing that the shale is laden with fossil fuels is only one part of the story. The samples, extracted from deep underground, then need to be studied to see how readily they would release the fuels.
So the BGS scientists fit small blocks of the shale into devices that squeeze it and heat it—trying to mimic the conditions that would be experienced during a fracking operation, when high
pressure water and chemicals are injected into the shale to break it apart.
Understanding how the shale behaves is essential to forming a judgment on how lucrative it might prove to be—or how unyielding or difficult, as some shale can turn out to be.
Dr Caroline Graham, a specialist in geomechanics with the BGS, explained what the research into the rock samples was trying to achieve: "We'll be able to understand better how likely they are to produce certain amounts of gas, how easily they will frack and therefore it will give us a far better idea of how viable the UK deposits are economically speaking."
These are early days for the science. And hopes that Britain will be able to copy America's shale revolution may be unrealistic.
A senior executive from a global energy company once said a decision on whether to exploit a new shale "play" or area would only be made after 40-60 exploration wells had been dug. Professor Paul Stevens, an energy expert with the Royal Institute for International Affairs, said: "It's going to take a lot more wells to be drilled and a lot more wells to be fractured before we even get an idea of the extent to which we might expect a shale gas revolution and over what time period."
So establishing that British shale is rich in oil and gas is only one step of a long journey. The current state of the science only goes so far. How much money can be made from trying to extract oil and gas from the layers of shale that lie beneath Britain?
下一题
(2/2)Section ⅠEnglish-Chinese Translation
Translate the following two passages into Chinese.
Part A Compulsory Translation
第2题
It was a hot afternoon in July when my shuttle bus stuttered to a halt on the dusty banks of the Yukon River. I squinted, bleary-eyed, at the Frontier-style houses of Canada's Dawson City opposite.
Thanks to our slow progress along the scantily paved Top of the World Highway, my 10-hour, 620km journey from Fairbanks, Alaska had been long and uncomfortable. But as I was on a quest to discover the landscapes immortalised in the books of US writer, Jack London, a man who braved Canada's sub-zero temperatures and wilderness before roads like the highway even existed, it seemed inappropriate to complain.
In October 1897, London had arrived in Dawson City on a hastily constructed boat in far more arduous circumstances than I, including a dangerous, 800kin voyage downriver from the Yukon's headwaters in British Columbia. An aspiring but still-unknown 21-year-old writer from the San Francisco Bay area, London was one of tens of thousands of "stampeders" lured north by the Klondike Gold Rush. He went on to spend a frigid winter working a claim on Henderson Creek, 120km south of Dawson, where he found very little gold, but did contract a bad case of scurvy. He also discovered a different kind of fortune: he later would turn his experiences as an adventurous devil-may-care prospector into a body of Klondike-inspired fiction—and into $1 million in book profits, making him the first US author to earn such an amount.
The Klondike Gold Rush ignited in 1896, when three US prospectors found significant gold deposits in a small tributary in Canada's Yukon Territory. When the news filtered to Seattle and San Francisco the following summer, the effect on a US still reeling from severe economic recession was unprecedented. Thousands risked their lives to make the sometimes year-long
journey to the subarctic gold fields. Of an estimated 100,000 people who set out for the Klondike over the following four years, less than half made it without turning around or dying en route; only around 4% struck gold.
Dawson City, which sprang up on the banks of the Yukon in 1896 close to the original find, quickly became the gold rush's hub. Today, its dirt streets and crusty clapboard buildings—all protected by Canada's national park service—retain their distinct Klondike-era character. But as our bus crept along Front Street past bevies of tourists strolling along permafrost-warped boardwalks, I reflected how different London's experience must have been. Contemporary Dawson City is a civilised grid of tourist-friendly restaurants and film set-worthy streets, with a permanent population of around 1,300. By contrast, in 1898 it was a bawdy boomtown of 30,000 hardy itinerants who tumbled out of rambunctious bars and crowded the river in makeshift rafts.
The roughshod living would not have intimidated London. Born into a working class family in San Francisco in 1876, his callow years were short on home comforts. As a teenager, he rode the rails, became an oyster pirate and was jailed briefly for vagrancy. He also acquired an unquenchable appetite for books. Passionate, determined and impatient, London was naturally drawn to the Klondike Gold Rush. In the summer of 1897, weeks after hearing news of the gold strike, he was on a ship to Dyea in Alaska with three partners, using money raised by mortgaging his sister's house. My bus dropped me outside the Triple J Hotel, which like all buildings in Dawson looks like a throwback to the 1890s—televisions and wi-fi aside. Too tired to watch the midnight sun, I fell asleep early to prepare for the next day's visit to the Jack London Interpretive Center. Dawson City's premiere Jack London attraction, it is a small museum whose prime exhibit—a small wooden cabin, roof covered in grass and moss—sits outside in a small garden surrounded by a white fence. On first impressions, it looks painfully austere. But the story of how the cabin got here is a tale worthy of London's own fiction.
In the late 1960s, Dick North, the centre's former curator, heard of an old log emblazoned with the handwritten words "Jack London, Miner, Author, Jan 27 1898". According to two backcountry settlers, it had been cut out of a cabin wall by a dog-musher named Jack MacKenzie in the early 1940s.
Excited by the find, North got hand-writing experts to authenticate that the scrawl on the so-called signature slab was London's before setting out to find the long forgotten cabin from which MacKenzie had plucked it. North wandered with a dog mushing team for nearly 200km until he located the humble abode where London had spent the inclement winter of 1897-8 searching for gold. So remote was the location that when a team of observers arrived to aid North in April 1969, they became stuck in slushy snow and had to be rescued.
Once removed, the cabin was split in two. Half of the wood (along with the reinserted signature slab) was used to build a cabin in Jack London Square in Oakland, California, near where the author grew up. The other half was reassembled next to the Interpretive Centre in Dawson City. London left the Klondike Gold Rush in July 1898 virtually penniless, having earned less than $10 from panned gold. But he had unwittingly stumbled upon another gold mine: stories. During the rush, his cabin had been located at an unofficial meeting point of various mining routes; other stampeders regularly dropped by to share their tales and adventures. Mixed with London's own experiences and imagination, these anecdotes laid the foundations for his subsequent writing career, spearheaded by the best-selling 1903 novel The Call of the Wild.
The Klondike Gold Rush finished by 1900. Despite its brevity—and its disappointment for
thousands who staked everything on its get-rich-quick promises—it is a key part of US folklore and fiction thanks, in large part, to the tales of Jack London. Later, on a bus heading south to Whitehorse, I looked out at the brawny wilderness of scraggy spruce trees and bear-infested forest where the young, resolute London had once toiled in temperatures as low as-50～C. I felt new admiration for the writer—and for his swaggering desire to turn adversity into art.
上一题下一题
(1/2)Section ⅡChinese-English Translation
This section consists of two parts, Part A—"Compulsory Translation" and Part B— "Choice of Two Translations" consisting of two sections "Topic 1" and "Topic 2". For the passage in Part A and your choice of passages in Part B, translate the underlined portions, including titles, into English. Above your translation of Part A, write "Compulsory Translation" and above your translation from Part B, write "Topic 1" or "Topic 2".
第3题
把经济运行保持在合理区间，是中国当前宏观调控的基本要求，也是中长期政策取向。

今年中国经济增长预期目标是7.5%左右，既然是左右，就表明有一个上下幅度，无论经济增速比7.5%高一点，或低一点，只要能够保证比较充分的就业，不出现较大波动，都属于在合理区间。

根据有关方面的统计数据，当前，城镇就业持续增加，居民收入、企业效益和财政收入平稳增长，物价总水平保持总体稳定，全社会用电量增幅开始有所回升，结构调整出现一些积极变化，中国经济开局平稳，总体良好。

但也要看到，经济稳中向好的基础还不牢固，下行压力依然存在，一些方面的困难不可低估。

这些问题既是错综复杂国际大环境影响的结果，也是国内经济深层次矛盾凸显和增长速度换挡期的客观反映。

上一题下一题
(2/2)Section ⅡChinese-English Translation
This section consists of two parts, Part A—"Compulsory Translation" and Part B— "Choice of Two Translations" consisting of two sections "Topic 1" and "Topic 2". For the passage in Part A and your choice of passages in Part B, translate the underlined portions, including titles, into English. Above your translation of Part A, write "Compulsory Translation" and above your translation from Part B, write "Topic 1" or "Topic 2".
第4题
凡事预则立。

面对当前复杂形势，我们既要冷静观察、保持定力，又要未雨绸缪、主动作为。

宏观调控要把握总量平衡，更要着眼结构优化，根据形势变化合理把控调控的政策力度，适时采取针对性强的差异化措施。

去年我们在实践中创新宏观调控思路和方式，积累了新的调控经验。

我们不会为经济一时波动而采取短期的强刺激政策，而是更加注重中长期发展，努力实现中国经济持续健康发展。

我们已经确定的方针和所拥有的政策储备，能够应对各种可能出现的风险和挑战，中国的发展有着很强的韧性。

我们有能力、有信心保持经济在合理区间运行。

中国经济持续向好是有条件的。

中国经济体量大，外汇储备多，协同推进新型工业化、信息化、城镇化、农业现代化，回旋余地很大，市场空间广阔。

尤其是中西部和东北地区人口占全国60%以上，人均GDP刚刚达到5000多美元，缩小城乡、区域差距带来的增长潜力巨大。

已经出台和还将陆续推出的一系列促改革、调结构、惠民生政策措施，将对稳增长持续发挥作用。

基础实才会行得稳，动力足方能走得远。

中国经济稳增长是有基础的，今后一个时期不但有保持中高速增长的良好条件，而且具备持续发展的不竭动力。

上一题交卷
交卷
答题卡
答案及解析
(1/2)Section ⅠEnglish-Chinese Translation
Translate the following two passages into Chinese.
Part A Compulsory Translation
第1题
How much money can be made from trying to extract oil and gas from the layers of shale that lie beneath Britain?
Answering that is proving to be a surprisingly difficult scientific question because knowing the basic facts about shale is not enough.
The layers have been well mapped for years. In fact until recently geologists tended to regard shale as commonplace, even dull—a view that has obviously changed.
The key tool is a seismic survey: sound waves are sent into the ground and the reflections reveal the patterns of the rocks. This describes where the shale lies but not much more.
So we know, for example, that the Bowland Shale—which straddles northern England—covers a far smaller area than the massive shale formations of the United States but it is also much thicker than they are.
That may mean that it is a potentially richer resource or that it is harder to exploit. Britain's geological history is long and tortured, so folds and fractures disrupt the shale layers, creating a more complex picture than across the Atlantic.
To assess what the layers hold involves another step: wells have to be drilled into the rock to allow cores to be extracted so the shale can be analysed in more detail.
As Ed Hough of the British Geological Survey told me: "We know the areas under the ground which contain gas and oil—what we don't know is how that gas and oil might be released from the different units of rock and extracted."
"There's a lot of variability in these rocks—so their composition, their history and the geological conditions all come into play and are all variable."
That means that neighbouring fracking operations might come up with very different results.
In a lab at the BGS near Nottingham, I'm shown a simple but effective proof that shale does contain the hydrocarbons—gas and oil—at the heart of the current surge in interest.
A few chunks of the rock are dropped into a beaker of water and gently heated until they produce tiny bubbles which rise like strings of pearls to the surface.
It is a sight which is both beautiful and significant—the bubbles are methane, which the government hopes will form a new source of home grown energy.
The gas and oil were formed millions of years ago when tiny plants and other organisms accumulated on the floor of an ancient and warm ocean—at one stage Britain lay in the tropics. This organic matter was then compacted and cooked by natural geological warmth which transformed it into the fuels in such demand now.
So one question is the "total organic content" of the shale—how much organic material is held inside—and there can be large variations in this.
But establishing that the shale is laden with fossil fuels is only one part of the story. The samples, extracted from deep underground, then need to be studied to see how readily they would release the fuels.
So the BGS scientists fit small blocks of the shale into devices that squeeze it and heat it—trying to mimic the conditions that would be experienced during a fracking operation, when high
pressure water and chemicals are injected into the shale to break it apart.
Understanding how the shale behaves is essential to forming a judgment on how lucrative it might prove to be—or how unyielding or difficult, as some shale can turn out to be.
Dr Caroline Graham, a specialist in geomechanics with the BGS, explained what the research into the rock samples was trying to achieve: "We'll be able to understand better how likely they are to produce certain amounts of gas, how easily they will frack and therefore it will give us a far better idea of how viable the UK deposits are economically speaking."
These are early days for the science. And hopes that Britain will be able to copy America's shale revolution may be unrealistic.
A senior executive from a global energy company once said a decision on whether to exploit a new shale "play" or area would only be made after 40-60 exploration wells had been dug. Professor Paul Stevens, an energy expert with the Royal Institute for International Affairs, said: "It's going to take a lot more wells to be drilled and a lot more wells to be fractured before we even get an idea of the extent to which we might expect a shale gas revolution and over what time period."
So establishing that British shale is rich in oil and gas is only one step of a long journey. The current state of the science only goes so far. How much money can be made from trying to extract oil and gas from the layers of shale that lie beneath Britain?
参考答案：英国页岩的油气开采经济价值如何?
想要回答这个问题可不容易，事实证明这是一个科学问题，仅仅掌握页岩的基本知识还不够。

多年来有关页岩的分布图早已绘制出来，就在不久前地质学家还认为油页岩没什么特别之处，甚至认为没什么发展前景，现在看来这种观点已经明显转变了。

页岩主要依靠地震勘探：声波传入地下，根据回声来判断页岩的构造形态，这种方法主要用来确定页岩的位置。

比如，我们知道，英格兰北部的鲍兰页岩比美国的页岩面积小很多，也厚得多。

这可能意味着鲍兰页岩蕴含有更为丰富的资源，但也意味着开采难度更大。

英国地质演变史漫长而复杂，因此页岩层有很多褶皱和裂缝，开采起来比美国页岩更加复杂。

评估页岩层还需要一个步骤：必须在岩石上钻井提取出核心物质后，才能进一步详细分析页岩。

英国地质勘探局(British Geological Survey)的艾德·霍夫(Ed Hough)告诉我：“我们知道地下那些蕴藏油气的区域，但是我们不知道如何使岩石释放油气并加以提取。

”
“这些岩石特性多样，岩石构成、形成年代和地质条件各不相同。

”
正因如此，周边压裂作业的效果可能会大不相同。

在诺丁汉附近英国地质勘探局的实验室里工作人员向我展示了一个简单但有力的证据，表明页岩确实含有油气等碳氢化合物，这也是人们当前对页岩兴趣大增的主要原因。

将一些页岩石块儿丢入装水的烧杯中并稍稍加热，一会儿这些石块儿上出现了小气泡，像一串串珍珠一样冒到水面上来。

这一实验看着漂亮，同时也意义重大：气泡是甲烷气体，英国政府希望将来这种气体能成为本土的一大新能源。

数百万年前，那时的海洋较为温暖，在海洋洋底小型植物和其他生物不断沉积，最终形成了油气。

在远古时代英国曾一度位于热带地区。

这种有机物质不断压实，在地热的作用下变成了如今需求巨大的燃料。

所以，一个问题就是页岩的“总有机碳含量”，也就是页岩内的有机物质总量有多少，不同页岩的“总有机碳含量”也差别很大。

不过确定页岩的“总有机碳含量”也只是其中一个方面，从地下深处开采的页岩样本必须经过分析才能判定开采的难易程度。

因此，英国地质勘探局模仿压裂作业的做法将小块页岩放入容器进行挤压、加热。

在压裂作业时通过将高压水和化学物质注入页岩将其分裂。

了解页岩的特性对于判断页岩的经济前景或者页岩的开采难度至关重要。

英国地质勘探局地质力学专家卡洛琳·格雷厄姆(Caroline Graham)博士解释了页岩样本研究的目的。

她说：“我们可以更好地了解页岩储层的含气性和脆性，从而更好地评估英国页岩油气资源的经济效益。

”
页岩科学研究还处在初期阶段，希望英国仿效美国掀起页岩气革命或许并不现实。

一名国际能源公司的高管曾经说过，只有钻探40～60口勘探井进行调研之后才能决定是否对一个新的页岩区进行开发利用。

皇家国际事务研究所的能源专家保罗·史蒂文斯(Paul Stevens)教授说：“还需要钻更多的勘探井，做更多的压裂实验，之后才能弄清楚页岩气革命能到什么程度，需要多长时间。

”
所以，确定英国页岩富含油气只是漫长征程的一步而已，当前的科技只能达到这种水平。

英国蕴藏的页岩油气开采经济前景到底如何尚不得而知。

详细解答：
下一题
(2/2)Section ⅠEnglish-Chinese Translation
Translate the following two passages into Chinese.
Part A Compulsory Translation
第2题
It was a hot afternoon in July when my shuttle bus stuttered to a halt on the dusty banks of the Yukon River. I squinted, bleary-eyed, at the Frontier-style houses of Canada's Dawson City opposite.
Thanks to our slow progress along the scantily paved Top of the World Highway, my 10-hour, 620km journey from Fairbanks, Alaska had been long and uncomfortable. But as I was on a quest to discover the landscapes immortalised in the books of US writer, Jack London, a man who braved Canada's sub-zero temperatures and wilderness before roads like the highway even existed, it seemed inappropriate to complain.
In October 1897, London had arrived in Dawson City on a hastily constructed boat in far more arduous circumstances than I, including a dangerous, 800kin voyage downriver from the Yukon's headwaters in British Columbia. An aspiring but still-unknown 21-year-old writer from the San Francisco Bay area, London was one of tens of thousands of "stampeders" lured north by the Klondike Gold Rush. He went on to spend a frigid winter working a claim on Henderson Creek, 120km south of Dawson, where he found very little gold, but did contract a bad case of scurvy. He also discovered a different kind of fortune: he later would turn his experiences as an adventurous devil-may-care prospector into a body of Klondike-inspired fiction—and into $1 million in book profits, making him the first US author to earn such an amount.
The Klondike Gold Rush ignited in 1896, when three US prospectors found significant gold deposits in a small tributary in Canada's Yukon Territory. When the news filtered to Seattle and San Francisco the following summer, the effect on a US still reeling from severe economic recession was unprecedented. Thousands risked their lives to make the sometimes year-long journey to the subarctic gold fields. Of an estimated 100,000 people who set out for the Klondike over the following four years, less than half made it without turning around or dying en route;
only around 4% struck gold.
Dawson City, which sprang up on the banks of the Yukon in 1896 close to the original find, quickly became the gold rush's hub. Today, its dirt streets and crusty clapboard buildings—all protected by Canada's national park service—retain their distinct Klondike-era character. But as our bus crept along Front Street past bevies of tourists strolling along permafrost-warped boardwalks, I reflected how different London's experience must have been. Contemporary Dawson City is a civilised grid of tourist-friendly restaurants and film set-worthy streets, with a permanent population of around 1,300. By contrast, in 1898 it was a bawdy boomtown of 30,000 hardy itinerants who tumbled out of rambunctious bars and crowded the river in makeshift rafts.
The roughshod living would not have intimidated London. Born into a working class family in San Francisco in 1876, his callow years were short on home comforts. As a teenager, he rode the rails, became an oyster pirate and was jailed briefly for vagrancy. He also acquired an unquenchable appetite for books. Passionate, determined and impatient, London was naturally drawn to the Klondike Gold Rush. In the summer of 1897, weeks after hearing news of the gold strike, he was on a ship to Dyea in Alaska with three partners, using money raised by mortgaging his sister's house. My bus dropped me outside the Triple J Hotel, which like all buildings in Dawson looks like a throwback to the 1890s—televisions and wi-fi aside. Too tired to watch the midnight sun, I fell asleep early to prepare for the next day's visit to the Jack London Interpretive Center. Dawson City's premiere Jack London attraction, it is a small museum whose prime exhibit—a small wooden cabin, roof covered in grass and moss—sits outside in a small garden surrounded by a white fence. On first impressions, it looks painfully austere. But the story of how the cabin got here is a tale worthy of London's own fiction.
In the late 1960s, Dick North, the centre's former curator, heard of an old log emblazoned with the handwritten words "Jack London, Miner, Author, Jan 27 1898". According to two backcountry settlers, it had been cut out of a cabin wall by a dog-musher named Jack MacKenzie in the early 1940s.
Excited by the find, North got hand-writing experts to authenticate that the scrawl on the so-called signature slab was London's before setting out to find the long forgotten cabin from which MacKenzie had plucked it. North wandered with a dog mushing team for nearly 200km until he located the humble abode where London had spent the inclement winter of 1897-8 searching for gold. So remote was the location that when a team of observers arrived to aid North in April 1969, they became stuck in slushy snow and had to be rescued.
Once removed, the cabin was split in two. Half of the wood (along with the reinserted signature slab) was used to build a cabin in Jack London Square in Oakland, California, near where the author grew up. The other half was reassembled next to the Interpretive Centre in Dawson City. London left the Klondike Gold Rush in July 1898 virtually penniless, having earned less than $10 from panned gold. But he had unwittingly stumbled upon another gold mine: stories. During the rush, his cabin had been located at an unofficial meeting point of various mining routes; other stampeders regularly dropped by to share their tales and adventures. Mixed with London's own experiences and imagination, these anecdotes laid the foundations for his subsequent writing career, spearheaded by the best-selling 1903 novel The Call of the Wild.
The Klondike Gold Rush finished by 1900. Despite its brevity—and its disappointment for thousands who staked everything on its get-rich-quick promises—it is a key part of US folklore and fiction thanks, in large part, to the tales of Jack London. Later, on a bus heading south to
Whitehorse, I looked out at the brawny wilderness of scraggy spruce trees and bear-infested forest where the young, resolute London had once toiled in temperatures as low as-50～C. I felt new admiration for the writer—and for his swaggering desire to turn adversity into art.
参考答案：那是7月一个酷热难耐的午后，我乘坐的班车在育空河尘土飞扬的岸边晃晃悠悠地停了下来，我睡眼惺忪地望着河对岸加拿大道森市充满边塞风情的建筑。

被誉为“世界之巅公路”的这段旅途几近土路，从阿拉斯加的费尔班克到道森620公里的路程居然走了10个小时，旅途自然谈不上舒适。

当年就连这样的公路都还没有的时候，一位名叫杰克·伦敦的美国作家不畏严寒只身来到加拿大的这块蛮荒之地，把这里的景致定格在了自己的书中。

相形之下，如今按图索骥的我如果再抱怨连连不免显得矫情了。

1897年10月，那时的条件更为严酷，杰克·伦敦乘坐一艘赶制的船抵达道森市，途中还要从位于不列颠哥伦比亚省的育空河源头顺流而下，经过一段长达800公里、危机四伏的水路。

杰克·伦敦在旧金山湾长大，当年21岁的他踌躇满志，不过那时还默默无闻，是数万名被称为“stampeders”(愣头青)的淘金者大军中的一员(当年的克朗代克淘金热曾吸引大批人北上淘金)。

那时人们相传在道森市南120公里处的亨德森溪(Henderson Creek)富含金矿，他加入淘金者的行列，在这里度过了一个严冬，黄金倒没有淘到多少，自己却染上了严重的坏血病。

不过，他倒是发现了另一个生财之道：他后来将个人经历描绘成义无反顾、具有冒险精神的勘探者，写出了一系列以克朗代克地区为原型的小说，这些书为他带来了100万美元的收入，让他成为第一位版税收入过百万的美国作家。

1896年，三个美国探矿者在加拿大育空地区的一个小支流附近发现了大量金矿，由此引发了克朗代克淘金热。

当时美国仍未摆脱经济严重衰退的影响，当发现金矿的消息在来年夏天辗转传到西雅图和旧金山时，在美国旋即引发了前所未有的巨大轰动。

数千人不惜冒着生命危险前往亚北极地带的金矿淘金，路途遥远，有时需要一年才能抵达。

在此后4年里，估计有10万人前往克朗代克淘金，其中一半以上的人中途折返或死在途中，只有不到一半的人成功抵达，真正靠淘金发财的只占4%左右。

1896年，靠近最初发现金矿区的育空河两岸逐渐兴起了道森市，这座城市很快发展成为淘金热时期的中心。

今天，这里的土路街道和硬皮包裹的隔板房屋受到加拿大国家公园管理局的保护，依然保留着克朗代克淘金热时期的原始风貌。

我们的大巴车摇摇晃晃地缓缓行驶在前街上，在车上可以看见一批批游客徜徉在因永冻层而变形的木板人行道上，我不由遥想当年杰克·伦敦在此淘金时的经历，那时的道森肯定与今天有着天壤之别。

如今的道森市餐馆待客友善，街道可直接作为摄影场，常住人口约1300人，是一个文明有加的小城。

而1898年的道森当时是一个新兴城市，(可以想象一下)3万名身材结实的淘金者从迷乱不堪的酒吧里东倒西歪地走出来，坐上简易的木筏，整个河上人头攒动，那时的道森可谓一派纸醉金迷的景象。

显然，杰克·伦敦并没有被这种粗野狂放的生活方式所吓倒。

他1876年出生在旧金山的一个工人家庭，无忧无虑的童年时光非常短暂，在他还是翩翩少年时，就逃票乘火车，偷捕过牡蛎，还因为流浪行乞而短暂入狱。

同时，他也培养起浓厚的阅读兴趣。

当时的杰克·伦敦满腔热情，做事坚决果断又缺乏耐心，自然难以抵制克朗代克淘金热的诱惑。

1897年夏天，也就是在得知淘金消息的数周后，他与三个伙伴一起搭船前往阿拉斯加的狄亚(Dyea)，当时的路费是抵押了姐姐的房子才凑齐的。

我在Triple J Hotel酒店前下了大巴车，这家酒店与道森市的其他建筑一样，看上去依然保持着19世纪90年代的模样，当然电视和无线上网服务除外。

旅途劳顿，我实在没有精神欣赏极地的午夜阳光，早早就上床睡觉了，我要为第二天参观杰克·伦敦故居养精蓄锐。

故居是道森市有关杰克·伦敦的主要景点，这是一个小型博物馆，主要的展品就是一个小木屋，屋顶长满了杂草和青苔。

木屋周围是白色围墙环绕的小花园。

乍一看，木屋简陋不堪，不过，木屋何以至此则有着一段传奇故事。