VOA标准英语2012--Man Who Found California Gold Died Broke
时间：2019-01-13 作者：英语课 分类：VOA标准英语2012年(九月)
Man Who Found California Gold Died Broke
Imagine that you’re John Sutter, and you’re in luck. But not necessarily good luck.
First, some background:
You may have heard of the San Francisco 49ers, a professional American football team. Its name is taken from the year 1849, when thousands and thousands of men rushed to California, hoping to strike it rich.
A year earlier in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a carpenter had discovered gold - great big nuggets of it - in the South Fork of the American River as he was building a sawmill for John Sutter.
Sutter was a Swiss immigrant - a wanderer and a dreamer who tried many ventures in Europe, New York, and the American Midwest before seeking his fortune in fertile but largely undeveloped land in what is now central California.
At the time, in the 1840s, it was part of a remote province belonging to Mexico.
Sutter talked local Mexican officials into allowing him to build a fort on the Sacramento River to protect what he envisioned as a new agricultural empire. "New Switzerland," he called it.
When his carpenter, James Marshall, found gold near a mill owned by Sutter high in the Sierras, he told his boss about it, and the two of them decided 1 to keep it secret while they hired men to pan the gold. Instead, the miners stole most of what they found.
Word of the discovery spread, and before long, mobs of gold-seekers descended 2 upon the American River, overrunning Sutter’s land.
So Sutter gave up the mining idea and tried to start a town, called "Sutterville," nearby. He’d thought he’d make money selling supplies and plots of land. But his agents cheated him, and he went broke.
Within a year John Sutter had given up his California dreams entirely 3 and slunk off to Washington, D.C., where he would later die, alone and penniless, in a hotel room.
Sutter’s Mill is now a ghost town. The settlement around Sutter’s Fort grew into what became Sacramento, California’s capital city.
But Sutter’s name can still be found there. The fort has been restored as a California state historic park and tourist attraction.
- This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
- There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。
- A mood of melancholy descended on us. 一种悲伤的情绪袭上我们的心头。
- The path descended the hill in a series of zigzags. 小路呈连续的之字形顺着山坡蜿蜒而下。