The village of Marlott lay amid the north-eastern undulations of the beautiful Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor aforesaid, an engirdled and secluded region, for the most part untrodden as yet by tourist or landscape-painter, though within a four hours' journey from London.
在前面说过的美丽的布莱克莫尔谷或者叫做黑荒原谷东北部起伏不平的谷地中间,坐落着马洛特村。布莱克莫尔谷四周环山,是一片幽僻的区域,虽然离伦敦只有不到四个小时的路程,但是直到现在它的大部分地区都还不曾有过旅游者或风景画家的足迹。

It is a vale whose acquaintance is best made by viewing it from the summits of the hills that surround it - except perhaps during the droughts of summer. An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad weather is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous, and miry ways.
从环绕在谷地周围的山峦的顶上往下看,这个山谷可以看得最清楚——不过也许夏天的干旱天气要除开不算。天气不好的时候,没有向导带路而独自漫游到谷内幽深之处的人,容易对蜿蜒其间的狭窄的泥泞小道产生不满情绪。

This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which the fields are never brown and the springs never dry, is bounded on the south by the bold chalk ridge that embraces the prominences of Hambledon Hill, Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe-Tout, Dogbury, High Stoy, and Bubb Down. The traveller from the coast, who, after plodding northward for a score of miles over calcareous downs and corn-lands, suddenly reaches the verge of one of these escarpments, is surprised and delighted to behold, extended like a map beneath him, a country differing absolutely from that which he has passed through. Behind him the hills are open, the sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give an unenclosed character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed, the atmosphere colourless. Here, in the valley, the world seems to be constructed upon a smaller and more delicate scale; the fields are mere paddocks, so reduced that from this height their hedgerows appear a network of dark green threads overspreading the paler green of the grass. The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine. Arable lands arc few and limited; with but slight exceptions the prospect is a broad rich mass of grass and trees, mantling minor hills and dales within the major. Such is the Vale of Blackmoor.
这是一片远离尘嚣的肥沃原野,泉水从不干涸,土地永不枯黄,一道陡峭的石灰岩山岭在南边形成界线,把汉伯顿山、野牛坟、荨麻岗、道格伯利堡、上斯托利高地和巴布草原环绕其问。那个从海岸走来的游客,向北面跋涉了二十几英里的路程,才走完白垩质的草原和麦地。他突然走到一处悬崖的山脊上,看见一片田野就像一幅地图铺展在下面,同他刚才走过的地方决然不同、不禁又惊又喜。在他的身后,山峦尽收眼底,太阳照耀着广阔的田野,为那片风景增添了气势恢弘的特点,小路是白色的,低矮的树篱的枝条纠结在一起,大气也是清澈透明的。就在下面的山谷里,世界似乎是按照较小的但是更为精巧的规模建造的;田地只是一些围场,从高处看去,它们缩小了,所以卫面的树篱就好像是用深绿色的线织成的网,铺展在浅绿色的草地上。下面的大气是宁静的,染上了一层浅蓝,甚至连被艺术家称作中景的部分,也染上了那种颜色,但是远方的地平线染上的却是浓重的深蓝。这儿的耕地很少,面积不大;这儿的景物除了很少的例外,只见那些广阔的生长茂盛的大片草地和树木覆盖着大山中间的山峦和小谷。黑荒原谷就是这种风光。

The district is of historic, no less than of topographical interest. The Vale was known in former times as the Forest of White Hart, from a curious legend of King Henry III's reign, in which the killing by a certain Thomas de la Lynd of a beautiful white hart which the king had run down and spared, was made the occasion of a heavy fine. In those days, and till comparatively recent times, the country was densely wooded. Even now, traces of its earlier condition are to be found in the old oak copses and irregular belts of timber that yet survive upon its slopes, and the hollow-trunked trees that shade so many of its pastures.
这块地方不仅地形引人入胜,它的历史也很有趣。在从前的时代里,这个谷被叫作白鹿苑。名字来自国王亨利三世治下的一段离奇传说。据说国王追上了一只美丽的白鹿后把它放了,却被一个名叫托玛斯·德·拉·林的人把白鹿杀了,因此他被国王处罚了一大笔罚金。在那个时代,一直到比较近些的时代,这个地方到处都长着茂密的森林。即使到了现在,从山坡上残存下来的古老的橡树林和错落不齐的树林带上,从为牧场遮荫的许多空心树上,都找得到当年情形的痕迹。