Direction: In the following questions, you have two brief passages with 5 questions following each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
PASSAGE
Two or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swam by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. Here is the way we put it in the time. It was a monstrous big river down there – sometimes a mile and a half wide; we ran nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up – nearly always in the dead water under a towhead; and then cut young cottonwoods and willows, and hid the raft with them. Then we set out the lines. Next, we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep and watched the daylight come. Not a sound anywhere – perfectly still – just like the whole world was asleep; only sometimes the bullfrog's cluttering, maybe. The first thing to see, looking away over the water was a kind of dull line – that was the woods on the other side; you couldn’t make anything else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading around; then the river softened up, away off, and wasn’t black any more, but grey; you could see little dark spots drifting along-ever so far away – trading scows and such things and long black streaks – rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep creaking or jumbled up voices, it was so still and sounds come so far and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there’s a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way.
SOME IMPORTANT WORDS
(1) reckon (V.) : to think something/have an opinion about something
(2) monstrous (Adj.) : very large and frightening
(3) navigating (V.) : sailing over/through a sea, river, etc.
(4) towhead (N.) : a sandbar/low-lying alluvial island in a river, especially one with a stand of trees
(5) scows (N.) : a large flat-bottomed boat with square ends, used chiefly for transporting freight
(6) streaks (N.) : a long thin mark/line
(7) snag (N.) : difficulty
(8) moor (N.) : a high open area of land that is not used for farming, especially an area covered with rough grass