C2 Proficiency (CPE) >> Gapped Text Reading Worksheets >> In this part of the Reading and Use of English paper, known as 'Gapped Text' or 'Paragraph Gap Fill', students must put back paragraphs that have been removed from a text. This section of the C2 Proficiency exam will test a student's understanding of coherence, cohesion, text structure and global meaning. This text: The Arctic Prairies.
Cambridge C2 Proficiency (CPE)
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C2 Proficiency
Reading: Gapped Text
In the following text, six paragraphs have been removed. Below the extract you will find the six removed paragraphs PLUS one paragraph which doesn't fit. Choose from the sentences (A-G) the one which fits each gap (1-6). Remember, there is one extra paragraph you do not need to use.
The Arctic Prairies
By Ernest Thompson Seton
At Athabaska Landing, on May 18, 1907, 10.15 A. M., we boarded the superb Peterborough canoe that I had christened the Ann Seton. The Athabaska River was a-flood and clear of ice; 13 scows of freight, with 60 half-breeds and Indians to man them, left at the same time, and in spite of a strong headwind we drifted northward fully 31 miles an hour.
The leading scow, where I spent some time, was in charge of John MacDonald himself, (1)_____, going to their posts or on tours of inspection. They were a jolly crowd, like a lot of rollicking schoolboys, full of fun and good-humour, chaffing and joking all day; but when a question of business came up, the serious businessman appeared in each, and the Company's interest was cared for with their best powers. The bottle was not entirely absent in these scow fraternities, but I saw no one the worse for liquor on the trip.
The men of mixed blood jabbered in French, Cree, and Chipewyan chiefly, but when they wanted to swear, they felt the inadequacy of these mellifluous or lisping tongues, and fell back on virile Saxon, (2)_____.
In the afternoon Preble and I pushed on in our boat, far in advance of the brigade. (3)_____ I set the camera eight feet from the log, with twenty-five feet of tubing, and retired to a good hiding-place. But alas! I put the tube on the left-hand pump, not knowing that that was a dummy. The Grouse came back in three minutes, drumming in a superb pose squarely in front of the camera. I used the pump, but saw that it failed to operate; on going forward the Grouse skimmed away and returned no more. Preble said, "Never mind; there will be another every hundred yards all the way down the river, later on." I could only reply, "The chance never comes but once," and so it proved. (4)_____
About twenty miles below the Landing we found the abandoned winter hut of a trapper; on the roof were the dried up bodies of 1 Skunk, 2 Foxes, and 30 Lynxes, besides the bones of 2 Moose, showing the nature of the wild life about.
That night, as the river was brimming and safe, we tied up to the scows and drifted, making 30 more miles, or 60 since embarking.
In the early morning, I was much struck by the lifelessness of the scene. (5)_____ River, hills, and woods were calm and silent. It was impressive, if disappointing; and, when at last the fir stillness was broken by a succession of trumpet notes from the Great Pileated Woodpecker, the sound went rolling on and on, in reverberating echoes that might well have alarmed the bird himself.
The white spruce forest along the banks is most inspiring, magnificent here. Down the terraced slopes and right to the water's edge on the alluvial soil it stands in ranks. Each year, of course, the floods undercut the banks, and more trees fall, to become at last the flotsam of the shore a thousand miles away.
There is something sad about these stately trees, densely packed, all a-row, unflinching, hopelessly awaiting the onset of the inexorable, invincible river. One group, somewhat isolated and formal, was a forest life parallel to Lady Butler's famous "Roll Call of the Grenadiers."
At night we reached the Indian village of Pelican Portage, and landed by climbing over huge blocks of ice that were piled along the shore. (6)_____
Use these paragraphs to fill the spaces above. There is one extra you do not need to use.
A. We heard Grouse drumming many times afterward, but the sun was low, or the places densely shaded, or the mosquitoes made conditions impossible for silent watching; the perfect chance came but once, as it always does, and I lost it.
B. As we made early supper I received for the twentieth time a lesson in photography. A cock Partridge or Ruffed Grouse came and drummed on a log in open view, full sunlight, fifty feet away. I went quietly to the place. He walked off, but little alarmed.
C. The adult male inhabitants came down to our camp, so that the village was deserted, except for the children and a few women.
D. whose tang, projectivity, and wealth of vile epithet evidently supplied a long-felt want in the Great Lone Land of the Dog and Canoe
E. The skies were clear that night and the frost a hard one. I shared a pipe on the foredecks with a hunter, both of us warming ourselves in the glow and smoke of the pipe.
F. and his passengers comprised the Hudson's Bay Company officials
G. The great river stretched away northward, the hills rose abruptly from the water's edge, everywhere extended the superb spruce forest, here fortunately unburnt; but there seemed no sign of living creature outside of our own numerous, noisy, and picturesque party.
