Great Explorers

People have always wondered what lies beyond the horizon. Explorers set out to find the answer, and many of them paid for it with their lives. Their voyages changed the way people saw the world and their own place in it.

人们一直想知道地平线之外有什么。探险家们出发去寻找答案，其中许多人为此付出了生命。他们的航行改变了人们看待世界以及自身在世界中位置的方式。

Exploration did not start in one century, and it did not belong to one civilization. Long before European ships crossed the Atlantic, Polynesian navigators were sailing across the Pacific, Arab sailors knew the routes of the Indian Ocean, and Chinese fleets were reaching the coast of Africa.

探险并不是从某一个世纪开始的，也不专属于某一个文明。早在欧洲船只横渡大西洋之前，波利尼西亚航海者就已在太平洋上航行，阿拉伯水手熟知印度洋的航路，中国船队也已抵达非洲海岸。

Some of the most impressive voyages in history took place long before the age of the great sailing ships. About 3,000 years ago, the ancestors of the Polynesians began to move east into the open Pacific. In large double-hulled canoes, they settled islands separated by thousands of kilometers of sea.

历史上一些最令人惊叹的航行，远在大帆船时代之前就已发生。大约3000年前，波利尼西亚人的祖先开始向东驶入辽阔的太平洋。他们乘坐巨大的双体独木舟，在彼此相隔数千公里海面的岛屿上定居下来。

They reached Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand, and they probably reached South America too: the sweet potato, a South American plant, was growing in Polynesia centuries before Europeans arrived. They had no compasses or charts. Instead, they read the stars, the shape of the ocean swells and the flight of birds, and they passed this knowledge down by word of mouth. In 1976 a replica canoe called Hōkūleʻa sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti using only these traditional methods.

他们到达了夏威夷、复活节岛和新西兰，很可能还到过南美洲：原产南美的红薯，早在欧洲人到来的几百年前就已在波利尼西亚种植。他们没有指南针，也没有海图，而是观察星辰、海浪的形态和鸟类的飞行，并靠口耳相传把这些知识传给后人。1976年，一艘名为“霍库莱阿”号的仿制独木舟仅凭这些传统方法，从夏威夷航行到了塔希提。

Ibn Battuta was born in Tangier, Morocco, in 1304. In 1325 he left home to make the pilgrimage to Mecca and did not return for almost 25 years. With his later journeys, he spent about 29 years on the road and covered roughly 117,000 kilometers, far more than Marco Polo. He visited almost every Muslim land of his time and went well beyond them, to the coast of East Africa, India, the Maldives, China and the empire of Mali.

伊本·白图泰1304年出生于摩洛哥的丹吉尔。1325年，他离家前往麦加朝觐，此后将近25年都没有回来。算上后来的几次旅行，他在路上度过了大约29年，行程约11.7万公里，远远超过马可·波罗。他几乎走遍了当时所有的穆斯林国家，还远远走出了这些地方，到过东非沿岸、印度、马尔代夫、中国和马里帝国。

Unlike many later explorers, he was not looking for trade or new land. The hajj started his travels, but curiosity kept him going. Back in Morocco, he dictated his memories to a scholar named Ibn Juzayy. The book, known as the Rihla ('The Journey'), describes the rulers, customs, food and daily life of dozens of places in the 14th century, and historians still rely on it today.

与后来的许多探险家不同，他追求的不是贸易或新的领土。朝觐让他踏上旅途，而好奇心让他一直走了下去。回到摩洛哥后，他把自己的经历口述给一位名叫伊本·朱扎伊的学者。这部被称为《游记》的书，记录了14世纪几十个地方的统治者、风俗、饮食和日常生活，历史学家至今仍以它为重要依据。

Between 1405 and 1433, the Chinese admiral Zheng He led seven great voyages through Southeast Asia, India and the Persian Gulf and along the east coast of Africa. The first fleet had more than 300 ships and around 27,000 men. The largest 'treasure ships' are said to have been several times bigger than Columbus's Santa María, although historians still argue about their exact size.

1405年至1433年间，中国航海家郑和率领七次大规模远航，途经东南亚、印度和波斯湾，并沿非洲东海岸航行。第一次远航的船队有300多艘船，约2.7万人。据说最大的“宝船”比哥伦布的“圣玛利亚”号大好几倍，不过历史学家对它们的确切大小至今仍有争论。

The voyages were meant to show the power of the Ming emperor, build trade links and bring foreign rulers into China's system of tribute. Zheng He's ships called at more than 30 countries and came home with ambassadors, spices and exotic animals, including a giraffe that amazed the imperial court. After the last voyage, the court lost interest in the sea. The expeditions stopped, the great ships were left to rot, and China turned its attention inland.

这些远航的目的是展示明朝皇帝的威势，建立贸易往来，并把外国君主纳入中国的朝贡体系。郑和的船队到访了30多个国家，带回了使节、香料和珍奇动物，其中有一头长颈鹿令朝廷上下惊叹不已。最后一次远航之后，朝廷对海洋失去了兴趣。远航停止了，巨大的宝船被弃置朽坏，中国把目光转向了内陆。

In September 1519, the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan sailed from Spain with five ships and about 270 men. He planned to reach the Spice Islands of Asia by sailing west. His expedition became the first to sail all the way around the world, but Magellan himself did not live to see the end of it.

1519年9月，葡萄牙航海家费迪南德·麦哲伦率领五艘船和约270人从西班牙出发。他计划向西航行，抵达亚洲的香料群岛。他的船队成为第一支环绕地球一周的船队，但麦哲伦本人没能活着看到航行的结束。

The voyage was terrible. The crews faced mutiny, hunger, scurvy and violent storms. Magellan found a dangerous passage at the southern tip of South America, now called the Strait of Magellan, and crossed the Pacific, where his men ate leather and sawdust to stay alive. In 1521 he was killed in a battle on the island of Mactan in the Philippines. In 1522 only one ship, the Victoria, made it back to Spain under Juan Sebastián Elcano, with just 18 of the original men on board. Educated Europeans already knew that the Earth was round. What the voyage showed was how huge the Pacific really was.

这次航行极其艰苦。船员们经历了叛乱、饥饿、坏血病和猛烈的风暴。麦哲伦在南美洲南端找到了一条危险的水道，也就是今天的麦哲伦海峡，随后横渡太平洋，船员们为了活命甚至吃皮革和木屑。1521年，他在菲律宾麦克坦岛的一场战斗中被杀。1522年，只有一艘船“维多利亚”号在胡安·塞巴斯蒂安·埃尔卡诺的指挥下回到西班牙，船上仅剩最初出发的18个人。受过教育的欧洲人早就知道地球是圆的。这次航行真正揭示的，是太平洋究竟有多么辽阔。

From 1799 to 1804, the Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt and the French botanist Aimé Bonpland explored South and Central America. They traveled about 9,600 kilometers through rainforests, along the Orinoco River and up the volcanoes of the Andes. They brought back tens of thousands of plant specimens, many of them new to science, and made careful measurements of rocks, weather and the sea.

1799年至1804年，普鲁士博物学家亚历山大·冯·洪堡和法国植物学家艾梅·邦普兰考察了南美洲和中美洲。他们穿越热带雨林，沿奥里诺科河而行，并登上安第斯山脉的火山，总行程约9600公里。他们带回了数万件植物标本，其中许多是科学界前所未知的，还对岩石、天气和海洋进行了细致的测量。

Humboldt showed that plant life changes in a regular way as you climb a mountain or travel away from the equator. He drew a famous picture of the volcano Chimborazo in Ecuador to illustrate the idea. The cold ocean current along the Pacific coast of South America is named after him. His view of nature as one connected system influenced later ecology. Charles Darwin called him the greatest scientific traveler who ever lived, and his book Cosmos was a bestseller across Europe.

洪堡指出，随着人们登山或远离赤道，植物会按一定规律发生变化。为了说明这一观点，他画了一幅描绘厄瓜多尔钦博拉索火山的著名图。南美洲太平洋沿岸的那股寒流就以他的名字命名。他把自然看作一个相互联系的整体，这一观点影响了后来的生态学。查尔斯·达尔文称他为有史以来最伟大的科学旅行家，他的著作《宇宙》在整个欧洲都十分畅销。

In 1914, Ernest Shackleton set out to make the first crossing of Antarctica on foot. His expedition never even landed on the continent. In January 1915 his ship, the Endurance, became trapped in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea. For ten months the ice slowly crushed it, and in November it sank. Shackleton and his 27 men were left camping on the drifting ice.

1914年，欧内斯特·沙克尔顿出发，想要第一个徒步横穿南极洲。可他的探险队连南极大陆都没能踏上。1915年1月，他的船“坚忍”号被困在威德尔海的浮冰中。在十个月里，冰层慢慢把船挤碎，11月船沉入海底。沙克尔顿和他的27名队员只好在漂流的浮冰上扎营。

What followed is one of the great survival stories. When the ice began to break up, the men rowed three small boats to Elephant Island. From there, Shackleton and five others sailed about 1,300 kilometers across the stormy Southern Ocean in a small open boat, the James Caird. They then crossed the mountains of South Georgia on foot to reach a whaling station and organized a rescue. In August 1916 the men left behind on Elephant Island were picked up. Not one member of the Endurance crew died.

接下来发生的事，成了最伟大的求生故事之一。浮冰开始破裂时，队员们划着三艘小艇到达了象岛。随后，沙克尔顿和另外五人乘坐一艘名叫“詹姆斯·凯尔德”号的无篷小船，在风暴肆虐的南大洋上航行了约1300公里。接着他们徒步翻越南乔治亚岛的群山，抵达一座捕鲸站，并组织了救援。1916年8月，留在象岛上的队员全部获救。“坚忍”号的船员无一死亡。

Exploration did not end once the land had been mapped. Today's frontiers are the deep ocean and outer space. In 1943 Jacques Cousteau and the engineer Émile Gagnan invented the Aqua-Lung, which let divers breathe underwater and opened a new era of ocean exploration. Even now, only about a quarter of the ocean floor has been mapped in detail, and we have better maps of the surface of Mars than of the seabed.

陆地都画上地图之后，探险并没有结束。今天的前沿是深海和外太空。1943年，雅克·库斯托和工程师埃米尔·加尼昂发明了水肺，让潜水员能在水下呼吸，开启了海洋探索的新时代。即使到今天，海底也只有大约四分之一被详细测绘过，我们手中火星表面的地图甚至比海底地图还要精确。

The space race of the 20th century produced a new kind of explorer. In 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space, and in 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon. Today space agencies and private companies such as SpaceX are planning missions to Mars. Magellan, Ibn Battuta and Zheng He could never have imagined such journeys.

20世纪的太空竞赛造就了一种新型的探险家。1961年，尤里·加加林成为第一个进入太空的人；1969年，尼尔·阿姆斯特朗和巴兹·奥尔德林在月球上行走。如今，各国航天机构和SpaceX等私营公司正在计划前往火星的任务。麦哲伦、伊本·白图泰和郑和恐怕永远无法想象这样的旅程。

The great explorers were not all heroes. Many voyages led to conquest and colonization, which brought great suffering to the people who already lived in the 'new' lands. Still, the same things run through all of these stories: the wish to see what lies beyond the map and the readiness to take risks for it.

伟大的探险家并不都是英雄。许多航行导致了征服和殖民，给那些早已生活在“新”土地上的民族带来了深重的苦难。尽管如此，所有这些故事中都贯穿着同样的东西：想要看看地图之外有什么的渴望，以及为此甘冒风险的决心。

Five hundred years ago, large parts of the world were blank spaces on European maps. Today satellites photograph every corner of the land, but the deep ocean and distant space are still largely unknown, and explorers are still setting out to discover them.

五百年前，世界上大片地区在欧洲地图上还是空白。今天，卫星拍下了陆地的每一个角落，但深海和遥远的太空在很大程度上仍是未知的，探险家们依然在出发，去发现它们。