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skills reproducible
“The Throbs of Hope,
the Depths of despair”
The Donner party (see play, pp. 14-17) was part
of a great migration of Americans in the mid-1800s
known as the Western Expansion. Westward fever
reached new heights after gold was discovered in
California in 1848.
By the following year, thousands of “forty-niners”
7 Words to Know
had flocked there. They dreamed of getting rich by
­panning for gold in the streams of the Sacramento
­Valley. However, the great majority found nothing.
Below are excerpts from accounts written by two
Americans who took part in that California gold rush.
Read them, then answer the questions.
if they enable me to place myself and family in
comfortable circumstances.
• prospect (v): to explore for valuable minerals
• try (v): to test or put pressure on
William Swain left his family in Youngstown,
New York, to seek his fortune in California with a
company of about 60 travelers. On January 6, 1850,
he wrote to his brother George.
After prospecting two days, we located a spot
favorable for damming and draining the river. . . .
If there is no gold, we shall be off to another place,
for there is an abundance of gold here, and if we
are blessed with health, we are determined to have
a share of it. . . .
I have not seen the hour yet when I regretted
starting for California. . . . I have seen hard times,
[and] face the dangers of disease and exposure
and perils of all kinds, but I count them as nothing

Luzena Stanley Wilson went west from Missouri in
1849 with her husband and two young sons. She
wrote her memoir in 1881.
Nothing but actual experience will give one an
idea of the plodding, unvarying monotony . . . the
exhaustive energy, the throbs of hope, the depths
of despair, through which we lived. Day after day,
week after week, we went through the same weary
routine of breaking camp at daybreak, yoking the
oxen, cooking our [scarce] rations over a fire of sagebrush and scrub-oak; packing up again, coffee-pot
and camp kettle; washing our scanty wardrobe in
the little streams we crossed; striking camp again at
sunset, or later if wood and water were scarce. Tired,
dusty, tried in temper, worn out in patience, we had
to go over the weary experience [the next day].
SOURCE: PBS.org
Uses: copy machine, opaque projector, or transparency master for overhead projector. Scholastic Inc. grants teacher-subscribers to Junior Scholastic permission to reproduce this Skills Reproducible for use in their classrooms. Copyright © 2010 by Scholastic Inc. All rights reserved.
document-based questions
Note: Swain gave up and went home by late 1850. Wilson prospered running hotels for forty-niners and spent the rest of her life in California.
questions
Write your answers on a separate sheet of paper.
1. Who were the “forty-niners”?
2. Why did William Swain go to California?
3. Where are Luzena Stanley Wilson and her family in
this account?
4. How do the circumstances that Swain describes
differ from the tone of his letter?
5. Which phrases best illustrate Swain’s resolve
to succeed?
6. Which adjectives convey how Wilson felt about
her journey?
7. What do you think she means by “the throbs of hope”?
8. On what aspect of moving west did Swain and
Wilson agree?
9. Read the footnote. Would you have expected this
after reading each writer’s account? Explain why.
10. If you had read these accounts in 1849, would they
have inspired you to go west? Why or why not?
JUNIOR SCHOLASTIC • Teacher’s Edition • march 22, 2010 T-7