Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 43 to 50.
After the United States purchased Louisiana from France and made it their newest territory in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson called for an expedition to investigate the land the United States had bought for $15 million. Jefferson’s secretary, Meriwether Lewis, a woodsman and a hunter from childhood, persuaded the president to let him lead this expedition. Lewis recruited Army officer William Clark to be his co-commander. The Lewis and Clark expedition led the two young explorers to discover a new natural wealth of variety and abundance about which they would return to tell the world.
When Lewis and Clark departed from St. Louis in 1804, they had twenty-nine in their party, including a few Frenchmen and several men from Kentucky who were well-known frontiersmen. Along the way, they picked up an interpreter named Toussant Charbonneau and his Native American wife, Sacajawea, the Shoshoni “Bird Woman” who aided them as guide and peacemaker and later became an American legend.
The expedition followed the Missouri River to its source, made a long portage overland though the Rocky Mountains, and descended the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. On the journey, they encountered peaceful Otos, whom they befriended, and hostile Teton Sioux, who demanded tribute from all traders. They also met Shoshoni, who welcomed their little sister Sacajawea, who had been abducted as a child by the Mandans. They discovered a paradise full of giant buffalo herds and elk and antelope so innocent of human contact that they tamely approached the men. The explorers also found a hell blighted by mosquitoes and winters harsher than anyone could reasonably hope to survive. They became desperately lost, then found their way again. Lewis and Clark kept detailed journals of the expedition, cataloging a dazzling array of new plants and animals, and even unearthing the bones of a forty-five-foot dinosaur.
Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 24 to 30.
Duncan Phyfe made some of the most beautiful furniture found in America. His family name was originally Fife, and he was born in Scotland in 1768. In 1784, the Fife family immigrated to Albany, New York where Duncan’s father opened a cabinetmaking shop. Duncan followed his father’s footsteps and was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker. After completing his training, Duncan moved to New York City.
Duncan Fife was first mentioned in the 1792 NYC Directory as a furniture “joiner” in business at 2 Broad Street. Two years later, he moved, expanded his business, and changed his name to Phyfe. He was a quiet-living, God-fearing young man who felt his new name would probably appeal to potential customers who were definitely anti-British in this post-Revolutionary War period.
Duncan Phyfe’s name distinguished him from his contemporaries. Although the new spelling helped him better compete with French emigrant craftsmen, his new name had more to do with hanging it on a sign over his door stoop.
The artisans and merchants who came to America discovered a unique kind of freedom. They were no longer restricted by class and guild traditions of Europe. For the first time in history, a man learned that by working hard, he could build his business based on his own name and reputation and quality of work.
Phyfe’s workshop apparently took off immediately. At the peak of his success, Phyfe employed 100 craftsmen. Some economic historians point to Phyfe as having employed division of labor and an assembly line. What his workshop produced shows Phyfe’s absolute dedication to quality in workmanship. Each piece of furniture was made of the best available materials. He was reported to have paid $1,000 for a single Santo Domingo mahogany log.
Phyfe did not create new designs. Rather, he borrowed from a broad range of the period’s classical styles, Empire, Sheraton, Regency, and French Classical among them. Nevertheless, Phyfe’s high quality craftsmanship established him as America’s patriotic interpreter of European design in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Although the number of pieces produced by Duncan Phyfe’s workshop is enormous, comparatively few marked or labeled pieces have been found extant. In antiques shops and auctions, collectors have paid $11,000 for a card table, $24,200 for a tea table, and $93,500 for a sewing table.
Which choice does the word “it” in paragraph 3 refer to?
A. His spelling
B. His chair
C. His French
D. His name