Question 86·Medium·Central Ideas and Details
The following passage is from an 1875 letter in which naturalist Mary Shephard writes to her colleague Arthur Peters.
I know you have prepared the boat and the maps, yet I must beg you to delay our departure by a fortnight. The river has risen by nearly three feet since last Sunday, turning the low meadow paths into shallow lakes, and the ferrymen at Brookes' Crossing refuse to carry passengers until the current slackens. To attempt to reach the rookery in such conditions would be foolhardy; we would spend our days bailing water instead of observing birds. If we wait until the first week of June, the flood will subside and the herons will have settled in numbers great enough to reward our patience.
According to the passage, what is Shephard's main reason for asking Peters to postpone the expedition?
For "According to the passage" questions about reasons or causes, first locate the sentence where the action (like delaying, deciding, or refusing) is mentioned, then carefully read the sentences immediately after for the stated explanation. Summarize that explanation in your own words, then choose the answer that matches it without adding new ideas not found in the text. Quickly eliminate options that introduce topics the passage never mentions (such as permits or extra people here), and be wary of choices that twist a minor detail into the main reason.
Hints
Find where she asks for a delay
Reread the sentence that begins, "I know you have prepared the boat and the maps, yet I must beg you to delay our departure by a fortnight." What reasons does she give immediately after this request?
Focus on the specific problems she lists
Underline all the concrete problems she describes: the height of the river, the state of the paths, and what the ferrymen are doing. Ask yourself: what kind of problem are all these details pointing to?
Match reasons in the text to the answer choices
For each answer choice, ask: is this explicitly mentioned as a reason in the passage, or would I be guessing? Eliminate any choices that bring in ideas (like permits or extra people) that the passage never mentions as motives for the delay.
Step-by-step Explanation
Identify what the question is asking
The question asks for Shephard's main reason for asking Peters to postpone the expedition.
That means you need to:
- Find where she asks for a delay.
- Look at the reasons she gives right there in the text.
- Choose the answer that best summarizes that reason, without adding new ideas.
Locate the evidence in the passage
Look at the first sentence: Shephard writes, "I know you have prepared the boat and the maps, yet I must beg you to delay our departure by a fortnight."
Right after that request, she explains why:
- "The river has risen by nearly three feet since last Sunday, turning the low meadow paths into shallow lakes"
- "the ferrymen at Brookes' Crossing refuse to carry passengers until the current slackens"
- "To attempt to reach the rookery in such conditions would be foolhardy; we would spend our days bailing water instead of observing birds."
These details are her stated reasons for delaying.
Summarize the reason and match it to an answer choice
Put her reasons into your own words: she describes a flooded river, strong current, and boatmen refusing to travel, and she calls attempting the trip "foolhardy" and a waste of time.
So her main reason for postponing is that the present river conditions make the journey unsafe and not workable.
Now compare to the choices:
- Nothing in the passage mentions needing more assistants or permits.
- She does mention birds, but only to say that waiting will mean more herons, not that they are absent now.
The only choice that matches the actual reasons she gives is:
C) Dangerous river conditions make travel unsafe at present.