英美概况内容及翻译

英美概况复习

此为大学英语专业考试内容，下文含翻译。

USA

I. Geography

1. Geographic Features

1.1 The Eastern Highlands

Formed by the Appalachian Range.?

1. An average elevation of 800 meters above the sea level.?

2. The highest peak:? Mount Mitchell (1856 m)：the highest peak of the Appalachian Range ?

3. East: the narrow Atlantic Coast plain

1.2 The Central Plains

1. Vast plains between the Appalachian Mountains and the Rocky Mountains?

2. Drained by the Mississippi River and its tributaries?

3. Usually divided into two regions:?

1) the Great Plains in the west: vast treeless prairies in the west and agricultural areas in the east?

2) the Central Lowland in the east: from the five Great Lakes to central Texas

1.3 The Western Mountains

High plateaus and mountainous country?

1. The Rocky Mountains: over 3,000 meters above the sea level?

The continental divide of the United States ?

2. West of the Rockies:? the Columbia Plateau in the north ?

the Colorado Plateau in the south

Grand Canyon,the Great Basin in between?

The Pacific Mountain System consists of three regions: The Cascade Range, the Sierra-Nevada, and the Pacific Coast Range.?

The Sierras contain Mount Whitney (4421m), the highest peak in the US outside Alaska.?

Death Valley in eastern California, 85 meters below sea level

2. Climate

The United States has a large size and a wide range of geographic features. Every type of climate is represented in the country: The climate is temperate in most areas, tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida, polar in Alaska, semi-arid in the Great Plains west of the 100th meridian, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in Coastal California, arid in the Great Basin?

Extreme weather is common: the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur within the continental United States, primarily in the Midwest.

3. Rivers

The Mississippi River (Great River, Big River in Indian language) is 3,770 km long: the second longest river in the United States. It originates from Minnesota and empties into the Gulf of Mexico.?

The Missouri River is 4,090 km long. It is the longest river (longest branch of the Mississippi). It is a Mississippi tributary, flowing from the confluence of the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin and emptying into the Mississippi River.

The length of the Mississippi-Missouri-Jefferson combination is approximately 6,262 km?

The Arkansas River (2,364 km) is the second longest tributary of the Mississippi River. The Ohio River is the largest Mississippi tributary measured by water volume.?

The Yukon River is a major watercourse of northwestern North America. Rising in British Columbia, Canada, it runs 3,700 km long, emptying into the Bering Sea.

5 great lakes

II． American History

1. Where did the first Americans come from and why did they migrate to America?

Book P 4-5

2. American Civil war

The American Civil War (1861–1865), also known as the War Between the States, was a civil war in the United States of America. Eleven Southern slave states declared their secession from the U.S. and formed the Confederate States of America (the Confederacy). Led by Jefferson Davis, they fought against the U.S. federal government (the “Union”), which was supported by all the free states and the five border slave states.

2.1 The Causes

The coexistence of a slave-owning South with an increasingly anti-slavery North made conflict likely. Lincoln did not propose federal laws against slavery where it already existed, but he had, in his 1858 House Divided Speech, expressed a desire to “arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction”. Much of the political battle in the 1850s focused on the expansion of slavery into the newly created territories. All of the organized territories were likely to become free-soil states, which increased the Southern movement toward secession. Both North and South assumed that if slavery could not expand it would wither and die.

The coexistence of a slave-owning South with an increasingly anti-slavery