Text only Version of the Online Writing Lab
St. Louis Community College - Meramec
Read the text three separate times:
FIRST, read to understand the general topic of the text.
"In fact, without the pine, early settlements might have been delayed. When Captain John Smith and his men sailed from England for Virginia in December, 1606, they planned to find, not pine trees, but gold. Captain Smith wrote in his General Historie of Virginia that there was “no talke, no hope, nor worke, but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, load gold” (Morris 50). Unfortunately, the adventurers found no gold and faced the prospect of being recalled to England when they could not repay their debts to the Virginia Company, which wanted quick profits. In desperation, they looked for something valuable, and they found the pines. Working furiously, they downed trees, cut them into clapboards and wainscoting, tapped trunks for turpentine and pitch, burned trees for potash and collected resin for waterproofing their ships. Despite the fact pines towered over all other trees in the forests and were hard to cut down, they were extremely valuable, providing fuel, turpentine, resin, tar, paints, lampblack, tanbark, and pitch."
Identify the main idea of the text above and click your answer from the choices shown below.
A. Captain Smith planned to dig for gold in the new world.
B. The settlers were disappointed when they did not find gold.
C. The pine trees supported the early American settlers financially.