DEEP DIVESAROUND THE BLOCK: RIVER
群系漫游：河流

Just go with the flow!
顺水行舟


The ocean is a scary place, deep and cold . But what if I told you there was another source of watery joy that’s shallow, warm, full of handy resources, and... oh, you know about rivers already? There goes my dramatic intro. Well, I will have to tell you all about them anyway, otherwise my editor is going to yell at me.
深暗幽邃、严寒彻骨的海洋是个恐怖的地方，但还有一种温暖清浅、资源富饶的水源……呃，你大概已经了解过河流了。尽管我的引入已丧失了戏剧性，但不论如何介绍还得继续，不然我的编辑该过来找事了。

Rivers became a part of Minecraft in the Adventure Update in June 2011, which totally rewrote the terrain generation code. There was water in the game before that, in the form of oceans and lakes, but rivers didn’t formally exist as a biome of their own.
2011 年 6 月的冒险更新中彻底重写了地形生成算法，自此河流加入了 Minecraft。此前游戏中的水源以海洋或湖泊的形式存在，而河流未被作为正式的独立生物群系。

Today, it’s usually pretty easy to find a river in Minecraft. They usually generate at the borders of land biomes, but it is possible that you’ll find one cutting across a single larger biome. They’re filled with water up to sea level, which means that they can run dry in particularly mountainous terrain.
如今在 Minecraft 中河流随处可见。它们通常会作为陆上群系间的分界，有时也会横穿较大的单一群系。河面与海平面等高，因此在重峦叠嶂间水流可能会干涸。




So why hang out at a river? Well, for one they’re pretty safe places to be. No one-eyed laser monsters shooting at you. Fewer hostile mobs generally, in fact – and you can always cross the river to escape if you start getting swarmed from one of the neighbouring biomes, shooting at them with a bow or crossbow as they struggle through the water. Watch out for Drowned, though, which can spawn in the water.
于河边漫步十分安全，也不必担心会有独眼怪物朝你射激光。通常这里敌对生物很少，如果你在邻近的群系被大批怪物包围，可以渡过河，然后趁怪物被困在水中时用弓或弩攻击它们。不过要小心水里的溺尸。

Rivers are a great place to harvest a few key resources – sand, gravel, clay, seagrass, and sugarcane are all readily found in river biomes, as well as ink from squid, and salmon if you’re a fan of fishing.
河流中包含许多重要物资，沙子、沙砾、粘土、海草和甘蔗都随处可见，河中的鱿鱼还会掉落墨囊。如果你喜欢钓鱼，还有鲑鱼等着你。

In chilly biomes, like Snowy Tundra, rivers can spawn frozen – with ice above the regular water, sand, gravel, and clay. In these rivers, you’ll also see rabbits and polar bears patrolling, so be a little more cautious if you don’t want to end up as a tasty treat.
在寒冷的群系，像是雪原中，河流除了普通的部分外表面还会结冰。河面上有兔子和北极熊漫步，要小心点别被当做美餐。





Minecraft’s rivers meander across the landscape rather aimlessly. But rivers in the real world always begin in areas of high ground and almost always flow into the ocean (occasionally flowing underground instead).
Minecraft 中的河流于不同景致间漫无目的地蜿蜒前行。然而现实中的河流总在高海拔地区发源，且多数最终会汇入海洋，有时也会流向地下。

While rivers only cover about 0.1% of the surface of the world, they’ve been incredibly important to human civilization, and almost all of the world’s cities are sited next to rivers. Why? Because humans need water to drink and rivers are a great source of a lot of water. We also use rivers for obtaining food, for transport, as borders, as defense, as a source of power, for irrigation, for bathing, and for, er, waste disposal.
尽管河流面积只占地表的 0.1%，它们仍对人类文明起到了非同凡响的作用。绝大部分城市都与河流毗邻，其原因在于河流能为人类提供大量的饮用水资源。河流还能用来提供食物、作为运输渠道、划分边界、作为防御手段、供给电力、农业灌溉、日常洗漱，以及处理**。

The coolest fact I know about rivers concerns the world’s largest river – the Amazon – which used to flow in the opposite direction . The Amazon has been flowing for a very, very long time – since at least 65 million years ago, when South America and Africa were still the same continent – Gondwana. Around then, a mountain chain in what is now Africa produced a river that flowed westward across what is now South America and emptied into the ocean there.
据我所知，最有意思的河流冷知识是有关亚马孙河的，这条世界最大的河流流向曾完全相反。亚马孙河的历史源远流长，至少六千五百万年前，南美洲还与非洲连为一体、形成冈瓦纳古陆的时候，在如今的非洲，一片山脉间发源出一条河流。这条河向西流淌、横穿如今的南美洲，并汇入海洋。

Until plate tectonics intervened. Gondwana broke up, and the proto-Amazon flowing across South America was split in two. Half flowed westward, and half flowed eastward. But then something else happened - the rising Andes mountain chain, at some point between 23 and 5 million years ago, blocked the westward river’s journey across the continent, and the water began pooling up into a huge lake. This lake eventually eroded its way through the mountain range that had split the river in too – and suddenly the entire Amazon was flowing eastward.
后来，板块构造开始发挥作用。冈瓦纳古陆破裂，流淌在南美洲的原始亚马孙河被分成了两段。一段继续向西流动，另一段则向东。两千三百万年前到五百万年前之间，缓缓升起的安第斯山脉阻挡了西流段横穿大陆的路线，河水逐渐汇成了巨湖。湖水最终将分裂河流的山脉侵蚀，于是突然间整条河开始东流。

Minecraft’s rivers don’t flow at all, – they’re as calm as a Minecraft.net editor who gets his article delivered on time! But if you’ve got a hankering for a flowing river, then there are plenty of mods that’ll do the trick. Now go forth and explore!
Minecraft 的河流和准时收到文章的 Minecraft.net 编辑一样，始终毫无波澜。当然如果你想，许多模组都能让你体验川流不息的河。是时候探索一番了！




【Inverted_Raven 译自官网 2020 年 10 月 22 日发布的 Around the Block: River；原作者 Duncan Geere】
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