Text Leveling System

Striking It Rich

RDQ:	1188	Max Word/Sent	26	Total Words	1611		Diff Words	675
Lex	780	Ave Word/.Sent	11	Hi Freq occurs	1013	62.9%	Hi freq	232	34.4%
AR	3.9	Long Sentences	7.2	Low Freq occurs	126	7.8%	Low freq	100	14.8%

News Travels Fast Gold! 
The news was big if it was true - but was it? San Francisco might be a sleepy little town but it had heard these stories before. There were always plenty of rumors boasts and outright lies when it came to finding gold in the hills. The facts behind this latest story were plain enough. The began with James Marshall a carpenter. He was helping to build a sawmill on the American River a hundred miles to the east. Marshall had little education but he had sharp eyes and was nobody's fool. On January 24 1848 he was digging in the riverbed. There he spotted a glittering yellow rock no bigger than his thumbnail. Gold thought Marshall or maybe iron pyrite which looks like gold but is more brittle. He struck the metal with a hammer. It flattened but did not break - a good sign. But Marshall was a busy man. He stuck the rock in his hat and went back to work. Later he rode to Sutter's Fort to see his boss John A. Sutter. Born in Switzerland Sutter had been a farmer a trader and a fur trapper. He had never been too successful. Sutter and Marshall carefully examined the rock. They bit it to see if it was soft like gold. It was. They dabbed it with acid to see if its shine would dim. It didn't. Then they weighed it against silver and other things they knew were lighter than gold. The rock passed every test. It was gold all right. Sutter told Marshall to keep the gold a secret. It might not amount to much but it could still distract the men from their jobs. But secrets like that don't last. Sutter's men soon learned what Marshall had found. On Sundays their day off they began to look for nuggets and gold dust. Some workers collected enough gold in an hour to equal a month's pay. By the spring of 1848 more and more tales were reaching San Francisco which was home to 800 people. Miners were bragging about scraping gold off rocks with their knives. Why one fellow had hit a $50 nugget while digging a hole for his tent pole. Didn't there have to be a little truth to these reports? Many people thought so and the gold fever spread. Lawyers dropped their clients and soldiers deserted their posts. The schoolhouse closed after its only teacher ran off. Then the mayor disappeared. And nobody could complain to the sheriff because he was gone too. By the end of June San Francisco was almost a ghost town. Stores were empty. Doors blew open in the wind. Dogs roamed the streets and wooden sidewalks with only their shadows for company. Everyone it seemed had left for the hills. Heading West During the summer of 1848 the news spread slowly eastward. It rode across the prairie on horseback. It paddled up the Mississippi river on steamboats. It blew around South America on sailing ships. At first people back East were not much impressed. Nobody was sure if the stories were true. After all talk was cheap and California was far away. Most Americans didn't know much about California. The territory had only been part of the United states for a few months since the end of the Mexican War. Its population was small and scattered - a mixture of native tribes Mexican settlers and a few American pioneers. Before long though California was on everyone's mind. By November the new York City newspapers were filled with stories about gold. There was talk of streets paved with gold and nuggets as big as apples lying on the ground. Then in December President James K. Polk spoke to Congress about the gold strike. Based on reports from the army and government officials his speech mentioned "extensive" mines. "The abundance of gold ..." he said " would scarcely command belief..." That settled it. Even those people who didn't believe the newspapers had faith in the president. He was bound to know the truth. Now California was the place to go. In 1848 a decent job as a store clerk or farmhand might be worth $7 a week. A miner could collect four times that much between breakfast and lunch. It all sounded so simple. Spend a few months in California and then return home pockets filled with gold. The thousands of dreamers who believed this were almost all men and were mostly young though one was a ninety-year-old Revolutionary War veteran. Few traveled with their wives or children - if they had them - because they didn't plan to stay very long. First though the miners had to get to California. One hopeful inventor offered a trip by flying machine. But his balloon-floating ship never got off the ground. Instead travelers went by land or sea. The sea route the favorite of Easterners went down around South America and back up to San Francisco. Hundreds of ships from elegant clippers to leaky barges made the trip. The 15000 mile voyage took from six months to a year. Most ships were cramped and crowded. One put so many people into a single room that they had to sleep standing up. sometimes the passengers were from the same town and knew each other. Often everyone was a stranger wary of other travelers. On such a long voyage many passengers got seasick and could not eat. The rest weren't much luckier. The meals had odd names like lobscouse and hushamagrundy. The ingredients - including meat and moldy bread - were even odder. One passenger wrote that his favorite food was anything with dark molasses because it hid the mold and killed the bugs. By the end most sea travelers were tired sick hungry bored silly and in need of a bath. Some had gambled away their savings. Many were in poor health. But almost all the hurts or hardships were forgotten at the first sight of San Francisco Bay. People from the Midwest favored the land route to California. From Missouri the trip was 1800 miles by wagon train - although one man walked the distance with his belongings in a wheelbarrow. A typical wagon was ten feet long four feet wide and pulled by oxen or mules. The wagon train might have just a few wagons or several dozen. The wagon master led the train and settled any problems along the way. He also gave out chores - gathering firewood or water keeping lookout or cooking food. One wagon train even made its members change their underwear each week and carry three pounds of soap for baths. Days on the trail were long dusty and hot. The ride was bumpy. Travelers carried weapons to defend themselves from rattlesnakes grizzly bears and Indians. But more men were killed by accidents with guns than by any run-ins they had along the trail. One big killer on the trail was cholera a disease caused by a bacteria found in water. It passed through rivers wells even canteens - and it acted fast. A man could feel feverish in the morning and be dead by sunset. Cholera claimed thousands of lives among the gold-seekers during the spring and summer of 1849. The third route to California took the least time if things went well but they rarely did go well. Travelers took a boat ride to Central America walked sixty miles across Panama and took another boat ride up to California. The sea trips held few dangers because they were brief. The overland walk was the tricky part. The Panama jungle was hot and filled with mosquitoes that carried malaria a usually fatal disease. The jungle also was home to flamingoes parrots and monkeys. But most travelers were in too much of a hurry to notice. Whether they came by boat or wagon train about 80000 people reached California in 1849. These were the Forty-Niners  hopeful miners who had survived the worst trip of their lives. They could afford to smile and shake one another's hands. Now they thought their worries were over. The mining life Most of the Gold-seekers had rushed to California without much thought. Some brought all the comforts of home: wooden chairs and tables fancy dishes even crystal lamps. Others were more practical. They brought raincoats heavy boots canvas tents and cooking pans. But almost no one knew how to mine for gold. And nobody cared. Everyone was still dazzled by the wild success stories they had heard. One miner had fallen down a hill dug into the dirt at the bottom and struck it rich. Another had seen his mule pulling up tufts of grass - and flecks of gold too. The biggest nugget found in 1849 weighed 161 pounds and was worth $38000 so anything seemed possible. Wise travelers spent little time in San Francisco where a small hotel room rented for $1800 a month the price of a new house back East. Even a house cat cost $8 to $12. Instead hopeful miners took a three-day ferry ride to the hills where they began hunting for gold in and around the mountain rivers. One newcomer was amazed to see a seasoned miner "pull" a nugget from the bark of a tree. He had climbed halfway up a nearby pine to try his luck before he saw the miner laughing at him down below. When a gold seeker started mining for real the first thing he did was stake a claim. To do this he would drive four pegs into the grounds at the corners of a piece of land beside a river. To hold his claim he had to keep working it. A claim left untended for a week was up for grabs - unless the miner was sick.]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Some support

Vocabulary: Many difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Some Long/Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Some implications

Concepts: Concrete/Simple Social

Table of Contents

Chapters

Features

Topic

Travel/Traveling

Treasures

Searching/Hunting

Money

Gold

*Economics

Low Frequency Words

abundance	bacteria	cholera	clients	collected
congress	decent	disease	easterners	eastward
education	elegant	extensive	fatal	favored
fellow	ferry	feverish	flamingoes	flecks
gambled	gathering	government	grizzly	hardships
hopeful	hushamagrundy	impressed	ingredients	inventor
january	knives	lawyers	lighter	lobscouse
luckier	malaria	marshall	mentioned	mexican
midwest	mining	mississippi	missouri	mosquitoes
newcomer	niners	nugget	nuggets	odder
officials	outright	overland	paddled	panama
passenger	passengers	pioneers	pockets	polk
population	practical	prairie	president	pyrite
revolutionary	riverbed	roamed	route	rumors
sawmill	scarcely	schoolhouse	seasick	seasoned
seeker	seekers	sheriff	sidewalks	speech
steamboats	survived	sutter	sutter's	switzerland
territory	thumbnail	trader	tufts	typical
underwear	untended	veteran	voyage	wary
weapons	weighed	wheelbarrow	wives	worth