Multiple choice

The essential peculiarities of Numidia, in turn, are reflected in

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.
To the east and west, there are wide stretches of woodland, rounded hill-summits, streams and torrents which pour through the valleys and glens. But towards the south the verdure grows sparse; arid mountain-tops appear, crushed down as blunted cones; the sterility of the desert becomes perceptible amid the wealth of vegetation. This full-foliaged land has its harsh and stern localities. The African light, however, softens all that. The deep green of the oaks and pines runs into waves of warm and ever-altering tints which are a caress and a delight for the eye. A man has it thoroughly brought home to him that he is in a land of the sun.
To say the least, it is a country of strongly marked features which affords the strangest contrast with the surrounding districts. This wooded Numidia, with its flowing brooks, its fields where the cattle graze, differs in the highest degree from the Numidia towards Setif – a wide, desolate plain, where the stubble of the wheat-fields, the sandy steppes, roll away in monotonous undulations to the cloudy barrier of Mount Atlas which closes the horizon. And this rough and melancholy plain in its turn offers a striking contrast with the coast region of Boujeiah and Hippo, which is not unlike the Italian Campania in its mellowness and gaiety. Such clear-cut differences between the various parts of the same province doubtlessly explain the essential peculiarities of the Numidian character. The bishop Augustine, who carried his pastoral cross from one end to the other of this country, and was its acting and thinking soul, may perhaps have owed to it the contrasts and many-sidedness of his own rich nature.

  1. the diversity of its landscape

  2. the richness of its vegetation

  3. the beauty of the alternating landscape

  4. the many-sidedness of the Bishop’s nature

  5. the peculiarities of its populace

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
E Correct answer
Explanation

(1) The diversity of landscape is in itself the essential peculiarity being referred to. 

(2) The richness and sparseness alternate.

(3) The passage focuses on the contrast, not on the beauty.
(4) Bishop is taken only as an example. (5) The character referred to in “Such clear-cut differences between the various parts of the same province doubtlessly explain the essential peculiarities of the Numidian character”, obviously refers to the character of its landscape also.