Every morning, James Marshall, who lived and built sawmills in the Mexican territory known as California, walked along the millrace and studied the wheel of the sawmill he had constructed. He wanted to be able to tell the mill’s owner, John Sutter, when the water in the race was deep and swift enough to turn the mill’s wheel.
On the morning of January 24, 1848, Marshall noticed something unusual in one of the deep pools along the bank. Under the clear water lay a yellow lump: a gold-coloured, chewed-up piece of rock, sitting on top of smooth and flat rock. He reached into the cold water and snatched up the strange rock. Then he stood by the bank, pondering what his next step should be.
Was it gold? James Marshall knew several tests for gold but only one such test could be conducted there by the riverbank. Marshall decided to perform this one simple test. He laid the stone on a smooth rock and then he picked up another rock that he felt would make a good hammer. He hammered at the gold-coloured lump. Marshall noticed that it did not break but careful inspection showed that it had changed shape.
He put the lump in his pocket and took it to the mill. There the mill crew conducted another test. They placed the lump on an anvil and beat it with a hammer. When the lump flattened but did not become fragmented, the mill crew knew that the lump was not iron pyrite, also known as fools’ gold.
Three more tests were used in order to ascertain the exact composition of that gold lump. The mill cook threw it into a kettle of lye, where it was boiled for a day. The prolonged boiling did not change the lump’s colour: it remained the colour of gold. John Sutter, the mill’s owner, was shown the lump on January 28, 1848, five days before his land became part of the United States.
He performed two different tests on the gold-coloured lump. After the first test, John Sutter observed that nitric acid did not damage the lump’s appearance. Then he placed the lump on a scale. Its weight showed that it was much denser than silver.
John Sutter and James Marshall were then sure that they had in their possession a gold nugget. They decided to keep the find a secret and they told the mill crew to keep quiet. However, one of the mill crew wrote to his friends about his efforts at gold mining. A store owner overheard another mill worker bragging about a piece of gold he kept in a small buckskin bag. When a deliveryman got a look at a handful of gold dust, shown to him by a small boy at the mill, the arrival of a California Gold Rush was almost unavoidable. Its occurrence was made a certainty with the publication of a San Francisco news headline reading “GOLD MINE FOUND.” Over ninety per cent of the people in San Francisco took off in the direction of Sutter’s Mill.
Read the passage “Gold Found in California” carefully and answer these questions.
Q1: Answer the following in one word.
- Where was Sutter’s Mill located? ____________
- In what city was the discovery of gold first made public? ____________
- The first gold nugget found in California was lying in a ____________
- Who was the owner of the mill? ____________
Q2: When and who found the strange rock?
Ans._________________________________________________________________________________
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Q3: Based on the passage above, mention three ways to test for gold.
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Q4: What is fools’ gold? What would happen to it if it is hit hard with a hammer?
Ans.__________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
Q5: What did the mill cook do with the lump?
Ans.__________________________________________________________________________________
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Q6: Why do you think John Sutter and James Marshall decided to keep the find a secret?
Ans.__________________________________________________________________________________
Q7: Find the words from the passage ” Gold Found in California” which means-
- quick or fast- ___________________
- considering carefully- ___________________
- reduced to fragments- ___________________
- not usual, common or ordinary- ___________________