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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How much money did the Sisters brothers let Mayfield keep out of Mayfield's own fortune?

2. What did Eli give to the boy with the wagons as the Sisters brothers left the stream?

3. What happened when the boy began to ride with the Sisters brothers in Part II?

4. What did the doctor from the encampment give Eli that Eli was very impressed with throughout the book?

5. What did Charlie tell the boy with the wagons they had done to his father?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why did Charlie ask Eli to have a chat with the boy before they set off on their journey again?

2. What caused the injury to Eli's foot that he suffered early in the brothers' journey to California?

3. What was the trouble with the horses Eli references in the first chapter?

4. How did Eli treat the boy once he had surprisingly caught up with him and Charlie?

5. Why was Charlie so often sick and unable to travel?

6. What happened between Eli and the female innkeeper where he and Charlie stopped for the night early in the journey?

7. How did Eli come upon a horse that was free for the taking?

8. Why was Mayfield interested in and asking the Sisters brothers about a man with a limp in Oregon city?

9. What was the problem with the weeping man Charlie and Eli meet very soon after they set off for California?

10. What did Charlie's treatment of the boy who as with the three wagons reveal about his character?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What do the dead beavers in the River of Light symbolize? Why does Eli go to the trouble of moving them?

Essay Topic 2

How does Eli's first sight of the harbor and all the abandoned ships in San Francisco affect him? What does the sight and the vivid imagery deWitt employs in this scene reveal about the atmosphere surrounding the California Gold Rush?

Essay Topic 3

Describe the effect that reading Morris's journal, and the revelations about Morris's plans it revealed, in San Francisco had on Eli and Charlie. How do their different reactions to the journal's contents highlight their character differences?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 945 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample