"Prospector" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... crossing three or four swift tributaries. About four o'clock we stopped beside a raging torrent and went into camp to reconnoitre. There were signs of some one having been here about a month before, and as the animals were shod we judged it was some prospector. The next day was so wet and Prof. was feeling so sick that we kept our camp, having made tents out of paulins and pack-covers, which gave me a chance to plot up the trail from Kanab to this point, one hundred and three miles. ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... This was a quick way to lose them—and perhaps his life. Some day, thought Grant wishfully, some big-shot would come along and clean out The Pass and then the little honest men would be safe. On the rare occasions when a prospector did find something of value and get back to land he would be allowed to keep it. Grant wished he had a lot of power or a lot of money. He'd take over the clean-up job. But a fellow like him, without friends, without influence, without money, ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... mountain which lifted like one of the pyramids out of the middle of Squitty Island. There had been much talk of those claims. Years ago Bill Munro—he who died of the flu in his cabin beside the Cove—had staked those claims. Munro was a young man then, a prospector. He had inveigled other men to share his hopes and labors, to grubstake him while he drove the tunnel that was to cut the vein. MacRae's father had taken a hand in this. So had Peter Ferrara. But these informal ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... now that the Yukon has the monopoly in freight and passengers, brings him no return. While the construction of this trail was a business venture, yet it remains a benefit to the country, and is of great value to the prospector. I should like to see Mr. Dalton recompensed for his unprofitable outlay." What came of this suggestion history does not record. The world is under immense obligation to adventurers who have blazed new trails to hidden natural resources. But the world is not always ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... daylight was gone, he explained that he was out of candles; so we sat in the dark, while he gave me a sketch of his life in a mixture of Spanish and English. He was born in Mexico, his father Irish, his mother Spanish. He had been a miner, rancher, prospector, hunter, etc., rambling always, and wearing his life away in mere waste; but now he was going to settle down. His past life, he said, was of "no account," but the future was promising. He was going to "make money and marry a Spanish woman." ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... to me, from what I've heard of it," growled the older prospector, "that the Double Cross would have been a heap more fittin' name for it. It's busted everybody that ever ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... more than seventeen years ago that a prospector penetrated from the south into the neighborhood of this mountain, guessed its height with remarkable accuracy at twenty thousand feet, and, ignorant of any name that it already bore, placed upon it ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... Chief, it passed from his tenancy with the American rifle bullet that terminated his career. The pioneer who thus succeeded to its attractive calm gave way in turn to a well-directed shot from the revolver of a quartz-prospector, equally impressed with the charm of its restful tranquillity. How long he might have enjoyed its riparian seclusion is not known. A sudden rise of the river one March night quietly removed him, together with the overhanging post oak beneath which he was profoundly but unconsciously ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a law throughout the North that a man shall not kill a porcupine. He is the "lost man's friend," for the wandering and starving prospector or hunter can nearly always find a porcupine, if nothing else; and a child can kill him. He is the humourist of the wilderness—the happiest, the best-natured, and altogether the mildest-mannered beast that ever drew breath. He ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... could command. At the time when Scarry had been prevalent in the mining camps thereabout—when, as the editor of the Hurdy Herald would have phrased it, she was "in the plenitude of her power"—Mr. Doman's fortunes had been at a low ebb, and he had led the vagrantly laborious life of a prospector. His time had been mostly spent in the mountains, now with one companion, now with another. It was from the admiring recitals of these casual partners, fresh from the various camps, that his judgment of Scarry had been made up; he himself had never had the doubtful advantage ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... travel in th' airship. That's one reason why I wanted t' go in one of these flyin' machines. Winter is no time to be in Alaska, but if we have an airship we won't mind it, an' it's the best time t' keep other people away, for th' ordinary miner or prospector can't do anythin' in Alaska in winter—that is away up ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... details given in local gold-digger's phraseology which would only be intelligible to a backwoods prospector or a Leichardt's Land mining expert. McKeith read all the details carefully, turning the page over and back again in order to read it once more. There was no doubt—making due allowance for Moongarr Bill's exaggerative optimism—that the find was ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... of a great anxiety. The first, of course, would be Tavish's cabin, or the ruins of it. He had taken it for granted that Tavish's location would be here, near the confluence of the two streams. A hunter or prospector would naturally choose such ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... Ryan went on. "Dave comes to town from a long day's ride. He tells Rutherford that he has been prospecting and has found gold in Lonesome Park. Nothing to that. Dave is a cattleman, not a prospector. Rutherford knows that as well as I do. But he falls right in with Dingwell's story. He offers to go partners with Dave on his gold mine—keeps talking about it—insists on going in ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... the futility of commanding a lot of things she could not eat, just for the fun of making a large bill. She was like the traditional prospector who struck it rich and, hastening to civilization, could think of nothing to order but "forty dollars' worth of pork ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... The ways of God are inscrutable. I've been twenty years tryin' to atone for the wrong I did Collie's mother. I've been a prospector for the trouble of others. I've been a bearer of their burdens. An' if I can save Collie's happiness an' her soul, I reckon I won't be denied the peace of meetin' her mother in the other world.... I recognized Collie the moment I laid eyes on her. She favors her mother in looks, ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... day of trophy hunting as a business in the United States is past probably, by preserving such heads, horns, feet and skins as come in his way the trapper, prospector and settler can often add considerably to his income. For instance, from one to five deer may be legally killed in different states. If two good heads are taken, worth say $15.00 and $20.00 each when prepared, that ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... larger than the whole of New England combined, and a veritable empire in itself. It is a State of magnificent proportions, and of the most unique and delightful history. Three and a half centuries ago, Coronado, the great pioneer prospector and adventurer, hunted Kansas from end to end in search of the precious metals which he had been told could be found there in abundance. He wandered over the immense stretch of prairies and searched along the creek bottoms ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... Bob, Mr. Gordon succeeded in capturing a big, rawboned white horse with a gift of astonishing speed. Riding horses were at a premium, for distances between wells were something to be reckoned with, and those who did not own a car had to depend on horses. Bob even saw one enthusiastic prospector mounted on a donkey. ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... adventures, and several narrow escapes. They incurred the enmity of Noddy Nixon, a town bully, and his crony, Bill Berry. The three chums then took a long trip overland in their automobile, as related in the second book of this series and, incidentally, managed to locate a rich mine belonging to a prospector, who, to reward them, gave them a number of shares. While out west the boys met a very learned gentleman, Professor Uriah Snodgrass, who was traveling in the interests of science. He persuaded the boys ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... great, lonely river, and by that time we were some twenty-five miles above Hogatzakaket, three hundred and twenty-five miles from the mouth and one hundred and twenty-five miles from the mission, at the camp of a prospector who had recently poled up from the Yukon. We woke on board the launch the next morning to find ice formed all around us and ice running in the river. The thermometer had gone to ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... story. It was a long one. After many hardships in life, which Mr. Keith related in some detail to Tom, the oil-well prospector at last fell in with Dixwell Hardley. Then ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... as I am of the beauties of Georgia I am prouder still of her material and natural resources. We have a vast undeveloped empire within whose borders there awaits the prospector such potential treasure as would make the fabled wealth of Lydia's ancient king seem but a beggar's trifle, and the consuming ambition of my life is to see these resources developed to the fullest degree and then shall my imperial mother Georgia shine as the brightest ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... finds were nearly always from three to a dozen feet under the surface, and when a prospector found signs in surface panning he knew there was rich dirt below. Well find our gold in this chasm, and near ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... another pack was thrown on. Each pack was in the straps, ready for the packer's back and the precarious journey over the Chilcoot. Frona edged in closer. She was interested in freights. She remembered in her day when the solitary prospector or trader had his outfit packed over for six cents,—one hundred and twenty ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... content with a wage and a master he'd have done better by her, but from the start he'd wanted his freedom, balked at being roped and branded with the herd. That was why he drifted back to mining, not a steady job, though he could have got it, but as a prospector, leaving Arizona and moving to California. There were years of it; he knew the mineral belt from the Panamint mountains to the Kootenai country. Juana and Pancha plodded from town to town, seeing him at ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... of water, and a constant head, bring about this ideal condition in the water wheel, the first problem that faces the farmer prospector is to determine the amount of water which his stream is capable of delivering. This is always measured, for convenience, in cubic feet per minute. (A cubic foot of water weighs 62.5 pounds, and contains 7-1/2 gallons.) This measurement is obtained ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... years, searched in vain for gold. You had tried mine after mine only to find you had not the ability to discriminate between the priceless and the worthless ore, or to discern the signs of promise that lead to rich discovery. Now, supposing another prospector had proved, over and over again, that he did know the places where treasure was to be found. Supposing he had demonstrated, over and over again, that his judgment and discernment never led him astray, and that reward followed his labor unfailingly. Now, what if this wise prospector ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... week before the hunters were expected home, a packet came addressed to Moya. It was a journal letter from Paul, mailed by some returning prospector chance encountered in the forest as the party were going in. Moya read it aloud, with asterisks, to a family audience which did not ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... him, as with his long form bending forward, his immense yellow beard that reached to his breast floating in the wind, he strode from camp to camp with the message of salvation. It took a good trotting-horse to keep pace with him. Many a stout prospector, meeting him on a highway, after panting and straining to bear him company, had to fall behind, gazing after him in wonder, as he swept out of sight at that marvelous gait. There was a glitter in his eye, and an intensity of gaze that left you ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... Indian, perhaps a prospector now and then," he said. "Last year I travelled a hundred and twenty-seven days without seeing a human face except ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... fence on either side scintillates. The house is too small, I am going out on the River Road, and see the cherry blossoms on the hill sides and the sunlight on the water, and feel the road under my feet. I feel like a prospector who has struck gold. Whatever comes of it all, for this one day I am going to give full rein to my fancy and be gloriously happy ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... thar ain't nobody ever comes in yere 'cept wunst in a while a prospector, maybe, er a band o' cattle rustlers. Even the ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... freighter to Alaska, young Thorwald, in the past ten years, has simply crowded his life with adventure, thrill, and experience, though thrills mean nothing to him. He was in the Klondike gold-fields, in the salmon canneries, a prospector, a lumber-jack in the Canadian Northwest, a cowboy, a sailor, a worker in the Panama Canal Zone, on the Big Ditch, and too many other things to remember. Finally, he drifted to Pittsburgh, where his prodigious strength served ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... Southwest fought stubbornly, but the wars that meant life and death to them were the merest pastime for an army that had just completed the humiliation of a nation of the size and strength of Mexico. The Indians were swept aside, and the country was opened to the trapper, the prospector, the ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... had been living on salvage. The uniform the first officer was wearing was forty years old—and it was barely a month out of the original packing. On Terra, Conn had told his friends that his father was a prospector and let them interpret that as meaning an explorer for, say, uranium deposits. Rodney Maxwell found plenty of uranium, but he got it by taking ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... attempt to divorce a possible external product from its terrestrial merger: then our joy of the prospector who thinks he's ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... to keep the gold seekers' excitement from dying out. With the greater part of my Hadley-and-Shelton earnings in my pocket, and with muscles camp-hardened sufficiently to enable me to hold my own as a workingman, I decided to take a chance and become a prospector. ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... companions Zeke said abruptly, "Better look around, boys, and see if you can find something else. My impression is that you'll find a set of prospector's ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... United States, and what they did in many places is printed on the maps of school geographies; but there is a vanished legion of those old-timers who are remembered only in the immediate neighborhoods where they lived swiftly and died hard. Emigrant and prospector, pioneer and Indian chief, cow-boy and cattle-thief, sheriff, stage-robber, and pony express rider—only the old men ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... been gratifying to the former prospector and miner to come back to Carson City a person of consequence, where less than a year before he had been regarded as no more than an amusing indolent fellow, a figure to smile at, but unimportant. There is a photograph extant of Clemens and his friends Clagget and Simmons in a group, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... differed much from other boys in my school days, was just as full of fun and mischief as any of them, but there was no real harm in me that I knew of. My father is a miner, a prospector, always on the lookout for, and locating, claims. Mother was always a hardworking little woman, and raised a large family. We had a neighbor who didn't like us, neither did he like my dog, which, just as any dog will, intruded on his premises once too often; so he shot and killed him, remarking ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... laughed. "The incandescent lamp travels about as fast as the prospector. Nome is lighted by electricity, and has been ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the ice the streams were compelled to find their way, as best they could, over a fresh land surface, where we now find them flowing on the drift in young, narrow channels. But hundreds of feet below the ground the well driller and the prospector for coal and oil discover deep, wide, buried valleys cut in rock,—the channels of preglacial and interglacial streams. In places the ancient valleys were filled with drift to a depth of a hundred feet, and sometimes even to a depth ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... prospector proceeded to the Golden Gate Hotel and inquired for Judge Stillman's room. A boy attempted to take his name, but he seized him by the scruff of the neck and sat him in his seat, proceeding unannounced to the suite to which he had been directed. Hearing voices, he knocked, and then, without ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... in digging a well on the beach at Nome, saw in the sands thrown up that alluring yellow glint which has led so many men to fortune and so many to death. The story of his find came to the ears of an old prospector from Idaho, who, too ill to go inland, was stranded in the military station of Nome. Spade and pan were at once put to work and in twenty days the fortunate invalid found ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... mother came from the family homestead in the wilds of northern British Columbia to visit me at the Great Oaks School. She had gotten into pathetic physical condition. Fifteen years previously she had remarried. Tom, her new husband, had been a gold prospector and general mountain man, a wonderfully independent and cantankerous cuss, a great hunter and wood chopper and all around good-natured backwoods homestead handyman. Tom had tired of solitary log cabin life and ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... invokes its God before beginning a campaign of murder, rape and pillage. The ruthless exploitation of India becomes the civilizing fulfilment of the "white man's burden"; not infrequently the missionary, drummer, and prospector are embodied in one man. In the nineteenth century church, press and university devoted no inconsiderable part of their time to proving the high moral and scientific justice of child labor and human sweating. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... Larner's adventure reached earth dwellers at all is due to the fact that Nern Bela on a subsequent visit to the earth narrated it to a Colorado quartz miner. This miner, a bronzed and bearded prospector for gold, stumbled on the targo in a mountain fastness, and there was nought to do but make him welcome and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... by some fortunate chance, and wandering along the river bank, stumbled on the camp of some prospector or trapper making his way to the wild North? His mind clutched at this new hope, eagerly. Hurriedly he climbed the sticky bank and began feverishly to search for any sign that could help him. Then ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... unable to rid his mind of the idea that somehow he had stumbled close upon the dead miner's secret. He determined to turn prospector ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... moment it lay there, smiling in the sun, a thing almost tangible; and then it faded. I felt a sense of actual loss. So real had been the illusion that I could not believe I was not soon to drink and wade and dabble in the cool waters. Disappointment was keen. This is what maddens the prospector or sheep-herder lost in the desert. Was it not a terrible thing to be dying of thirst, to see sparkling water, almost to smell it and then realize suddenly that all was only a lying track of the desert, ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... as many Indians, besides long-haired Pete, the guide) might have been seen slowly but carefully making their way through the snowy hill region of the headwaters of the Klondyke River. Mapped carelessly, as it often is, this appears a small and unpretending stream; but to the Indian or prospector who has tracked its length from a small creeklet at starting to a wide and rushing mouth emptying its pure waters into the muddy Yukon, it has a good length of several hundred miles, and must not be lightly mentioned. On its "left limit" were Bonanza ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... them. The case is not as when an explorer discovers a plant hitherto unknown, such as Indian corn, which takes its place beside rice and wheat as a new food, and so measures a service which ends there. Nor is it as when a prospector comes upon a new metal, such as nickel, with the sole effect of increasing the variety of materials from which a smith may fashion a hammer or a blade. Almost infinitely higher is the benefit wrought when energy in its most useful ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... I wish I could take each of you by the ear and lead you away by yourselves, and show you how many ruins strew the road to success, and how life is like a mining boom. We only hear of those who strike it rich. The hopeful, industrious prospector who failed to find the contact and finally filled a nameless grave, is soon forgotten when he is gone, but a million tongues tell to forty million listening ears of the man who struck it ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... Besides being the mayor and all the other city officials of Steamboat I'm a prospector. Last night I was doin' a little prospectin' and I came up with pay dirt. You saw what happened here. Well, I kind of figgered in advance what was going to happen, and I waited on the turnoff to Pahrump Valley. A sedan went by me pretty fast, but not so ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... used, an' must be used. We'll give it free to the settler an' prospector. We'll sell it cheap to the lumbermen—big an' little. We'll consider the wants of the local ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... the bar. A prospector leaned against it and talked to an acquaintance while they ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... grass not many hours before. The sight of their spoor rejoiced me exceedingly, for though I had seen wild elephants, at that time I had never shot one. Moreover, the sight of elephant spoor to the African hunter is what "colour in the pan" is to the prospector of gold. It is by the ivory that he lives, and to shoot it or trade it is his chief aim in life. My resolution was soon taken. I would camp the waggons for a while in the forest, and start on horseback after ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... time that Rhodes made the Rhodesian diamond deal a prospector came to him and said: "If I bring you a handful of rough ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... in the season," said my friend, the prospector, "when I took a notion that I'd like to see what sort of a country lies north of the Umpqua River, in Oregon, and I struck into the mountains from Drain Station with my prospecting outfit and as much ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... genuine emerald mine, which we can work, if we choose, on our return journey. Now, we'll just dig out that mass of calcite and carefully cover it up, so that in the exceedingly unlikely event of any other prospector passing this way, there will be little or nothing to attract his attention; and to-morrow, before we resume our march, we will determine the exact position of this spot by astronomical observations and make a note of it in our diaries, ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... he wondered what she was like. Her letters indicated a cultivated mind, and he knew she had a post at a Toronto school; but one could not expect much from the daughter of the broken-down prospector he had met in the North. Strange had worked spasmodically at the mine, where he was employed because labor was scarce. He was not a good workman, and when he had earned a small sum generally bought provisions and went off into the bush to re-locate a silver lode he claimed to have ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... upon, who, discovering that he had registered at a hotel as Pattinson, at length traced him to a British Columbian silver mine. He had, however, left it shortly before my correspondent learned that he had been employed there, and all the latter could tell me was that an unknown prospector had nursed him until ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... The prospector is the advance agent of progress, civilization and prosperity. * * * It is for the sight of a yellow streak in his pan that he has been tempted to endure the fatigue, cold, and hunger of the mountains, and the heat, thirst and ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... of the poor prospector's stock cries; but as a general rule capitalists are wary, and don't invest in such ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... was another saucer report. which received very little notice. A Portland prospector named Fred Johnson, who was working up in the Cascade Mountains, spotted five or six disks banking in the sun. He watched them through his telescope several seconds. then he suddenly noticed that ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... prospecting, and working over the old claims; but "dust," "nuggets," and "pockets " still form the burden of conversation in the village barroom or the cross-roads saloon. Now and then a "strike " is made by some lucky - or perhaps it turns out, unlucky - prospector. This for a few days kindles anew the slumbering spark of "gold fever" that lingers in the veins of the people here, ever ready to kindle into a flame at every bit of exciting news, in the way of a lucky "find" near home, or new gold-fields ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... one located by a prospector some years ago, but he died after he came into town with some mighty rich nuggets. He gave the location of the mine to a friend, but the latter lost the papers and never could find the claim. Lately a relative discovered the documents in an old coat pocket, ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... prospector by nature made proficient by practice. He had prospected in every mining camp from Mexico to Moose Factory. If he were to find a real bonanza, his English-American friend used to say, he would be miserable ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... years—his life has been spent in trying to find that cave. All those years his search was unavailing. He could find no trace of the little hidden valley in which the treasure-seekers found their bonanza of gold. No word of it ever came out of the mountains; no other prospector ever stumbled upon it. Year after year Donald went into the North; year after year he came out as the winter set in, but ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... his mind when he first saw the man— maybe a prospector. But he noticed the man's long, shoulder-length, sandy-colored hair, his dark skin, his Oriental features and his ski- pant type trousers. He ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... hat as he rides into town from his ranch down the river, may be a half-breed who has figured in a score of Indian fights, and enjoys the proud distinction of having killed his man. There is the hungry-looking prospector, waiting with ill-disguised impatience till he can "cross the Range" and follow again, as he has done year after year, the exciting chase after the ever-receding mirage—the visions of fabulous wealth always going to be, but never quite, attained. The time-honored symbol of Hope must, we think, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... the little house in the lane a surprise awaited them. They found Mrs. Erldon in her husband's arms. He had returned unexpectedly, having, as a successful prospector for gold, done well enough to return home at once to fetch ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... came to the point it was found much more profitable to explore Hampstead, Clapham Common, Blackheath, Ealing and other rich and fashionable suburbs. A number of hopeful ladies and gentlemen having been located in these parts, the Company went ahead rapidly, and in 1907 a new prospector was sent out to replace the one who was assumed ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... did, besides proving unfruitful, is not comfortable. Now and again, losing patience, Lin would leave his work and stalk about and gaze down at the scattered men who stooped or knelt in the water. Passing each busy prospector, Lin would read on every broad, upturned pair of overalls the same label, "Levi Strauss, No. 2," with a picture of two lusty horses hitched to one of these garments and vainly struggling to split them asunder. Lin remembered he was wearing a label just like that too, ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... minerals of commercial value are there; although iron ore is found in Pawling and nearby towns. On the confines of the Hill, in Deuell Hollow, a shaft was driven into the hillside for forty feet, by some lonely prospector, and then abandoned; to be later on seized upon and made the traditional location of a gold mine. The Quaker Hill imagination is more fertile and varied than Quaker Hill land. No commercial advantages have ever fallen upon the place, except ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... across the Bad Lands. The preparations were simple; at the store he bought a small pack of provisions, enough to last him three or four days at a pinch and in case of accidents; he filled his canteen; he spent half an hour with the grizzled old storekeeper, who in his time had been a prospector and who knew the country hereabouts as only an old prospector could know it. On a bit of wrapping-paper the old fellow sketched a trail map that indicated the start through the Pass, the general direction and the chief landmarks, the approximate mileage and—here he was very exact and accompanied ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... The sturdy old prospector, his face white with rage under the tan, uncocked his rifle and dropped the butt heavily upon the earth, his eyes wandering from the face of the sheriff to ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... the four boys on a highway leading from Columbina to Derrickville. They had fallen in with an old oil prospector who knew Nick Ogilvie well, and this prospector had offered to take them over to ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... had suggested, and that was the last Silver Bow saw of him for some time. Some folks thought he had met with foul play, others that he had wandered too far for his strength and had either perished or been taken care of by some prospector, while still others held the opinion that he had taken French leave. Speculation as to his disappearance soon died down, however, and Surly Sim, Tabitha's hermit of the hills, ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... my mind," he said coolly. "I found out that it was one thing to go down there as a skilled prospector might go to examine a mine that was to be valued according to his report of the indications, but that it was entirely another thing to go and play the spy in a poor devil's house in order to buy something he didn't know he was selling and wouldn't ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... scenery in the valley of the Yosemite and the snow-capped peaks of the sierras. At first there were few women, and the men led a wild, lawless existence in the mining camps. Hard upon the heels of the prospector followed the dram-shop, the gambling-hell, and the dance-hall. Every man carried his "Colt," and looked out for his own life and his "claim." Crime went unpunished or was taken in hand, when it got too rampant, by vigilance committees. In the diggings shaggy frontiersmen ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... a distributing centre for the big Kootenay areas, that romantic land of the earliest trail breakers, those dramatic fellows who pushed all ways through the forest-clad valleys after gold and silver, and the other rich rewards of the prospector. Even now the country has only been tapped, and there are many new discoveries of ore in the grim ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... of these routes spoke of the beautiful valleys to be crossed, of the lovely streams filled with fish, of the game and fruit. Each was called "the poor man's route," because with a few ponies and a gun the prospector could traverse the entire distance during the summer, "arriving on the banks of the Yukon, not merely browned and hearty, but a veteran ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... cynicism in his smile now, and without waiting for a reply he continued: "My name you already know. I have only to add that I am an adventurer in the wilds—explorer of hinterlands, free-trader, freighter, sometime prospector—casual cavalier." He rose, swept the Stetson from his head, and ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... in advance of the creative powers. Now the individual transcends his own experience and learns to profit by that of others. There is now evolved a penumbral region in the soul more or less beyond the reach of all school methods, a world of glimpses and hints, and the work here is that of the prospector and not of the careful miner. It is the age of skipping and sampling, of pressing the keys lightly. What is acquired is not examinable but only suggestive. Perhaps nothing read now fails to leave its mark. It can not be orally reproduced at call, but on emergency it ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... none of these hypothetical individuals, and that meant about everyone who came in contact with Peter at all, could have imagined anybody, let alone themselves, harming a hair of his head. But how he continued to be a prospector remained a puzzle. The life is hard, full of privations, sown with difficulties, clamant for technical knowledge, exacting of physical strength, dependent on shrewdness and knowledge of the world. Peter had none ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... Brevet-Captain Nevins by department orders was detailed in his place. This made him independent of almost everybody, beside placing in his hands large quantities of commissary and quartermaster stores which were worth far more to the miner, prospector and teamster than their invoice price. The stories that began to come into Yuma and Drum Barracks, and other old-time stations, of the "high jinks" going on day and night at Nevins' camp, the orders for liquors, cigars and supplies received at San Francisco and filled by every ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... with a pack on his back caused comment, in that heat, tramping two or three hundred miles for pleasure! Beyond the trivial necessities that bare existence makes imperative, I was not conscious of seeing anyone do anything on the whole trip. Old miners not unnaturally took me for a prospector, and I think I never quite succeeded in convincing them to ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... all agreed not to talk too much about it yet. It's not very far from here—I can tell you that. Precautions are necessary where a hundred men follow every prospector about, night and day, if he happens to have found a bit of valuable ore. A thousand men would be after this property if they knew the ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... interested me in his invention. He was an old fellow who had devoted the better part of a long life to the perfection of a mechanical subterranean prospector. As relaxation he studied paleontology. I looked over his plans, listened to his arguments, inspected his working model—and then, convinced, I advanced the funds necessary to construct a full-sized, ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was the celebrated Charlie Durnan. "Reefing Charlie" was the name he was usually known by. He was a most active and occasionally a successful prospector. It was he, I fancy, who years afterwards discovered the Pigg's Peak Mine in Swaziland. Charlie's weakness was drink. He and I ate the mealie-meal porridge of poverty among the Blyde River terraces for a couple of months. ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... sat up late that night in a corner of the barroom discussing the probability of finding gold in the Panamint hills. It soon became evident that they held differing theories. McTeague clung to the old prospector's idea that there was no way of telling where gold was until you actually saw it. Cribbens had evidently read a good many books upon the subject, and had already prospected in something ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... knowing. When a mesquit seems stunted, it is because its strength is withdrawn for the task of delving to find water; where a tree grows tall with goodly branches, it betokens success in reaching moisture close at hand. Thus in shrewdly reading the landscape a prospector can choose the spot where with least trouble he can sink his well. And plants discover provender in the soil as well as drink. Nearer home than Arizona we have only to dislodge a beach pea from the ground to see how far in search of food its roots have dug amid barren ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... settled in 1859. It obtained its name from an old prospector, James Finney, nicknamed "Old Virginny." Its elevation is ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... to the door, carrying a tray with a cup of tea and some food. "Here ye are, Miss Alleyne; ye're a born stockman, an' a prospector, an'—God bless you, miss, you've ...
— In The Far North - 1901 • Louis Becke
... of the "Queen," "and Alaska history is full of his vagaries. He's probably the best equipped prospector and all-round miner in the territory, but it does him no good. He has owned twenty mines, and has made a dozen fortunes and spent them all. Every time he makes a 'stake' as he calls it, he indulges in extravagances that make one doubt his sanity. He went out last ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... that we've bin hitting the right trail," declared Pete. "Last time I come this way was with an old prospector who knew this part of the country well enough to 'pick up' a clump of cactus. If that compass is right, we're ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... in so many words. Holloway consistently alluded to them as people, but he's just an ignorant old prospector. Rainsford wouldn't come out and commit himself one way or another, but he left the door wide open ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... mopping his perspiring forehead he once more commenced digging here and there in a most tantalizing fashion. Toby could not comprehend what it could mean. Was there gold or some other precious deposit to be found up here among these hills, and might this strange man be an old prospector from the West who had had long experience in searching for mineral lodes? But then such things were seldom discovered so near the top of the ground, Toby recollected. He wished the man would go away so he could speak to Jack, and ask him what he thought; because the more he ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... asked the questions: "How do you find fossils?" "How do you know where to look for them?" One of the charms of the fossil-hunter's life is the variety, the element of certainty combined with the gambling element of chance. Like the prospector for gold, the fossil-hunter may pass suddenly from the extreme of dejection to the extreme of elation. Luck comes in a great variety of ways: sometimes as the result of prolonged and deliberate scientific search in a region which is known to be fossiliferous; sometimes in ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... McCann, disdainfully, as he got into his boat, "he wasn't nothing but a prospector doing the lake for one of them summer ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the long, empty trail before him; he looked up at the prospector's hard brown face, and then at the little heap of gold dust in ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... wounds with an outer coating of mud from the banks of the stream. During the following night he disappeared. I suspect that the golden nuggets which caused all our troubles were taken from the body of a prospector who had been murdered in the lonesome ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... me the story. He had been an old prospector in the Klondike, but not a successful one, as he was too honest. On his return, from Alaska, he had to stop in Denver and work for his fare back to the East where he came from. Being a splendid engineer ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... a prospector with his family and servants, in all about a score, arrived at this spot near the junction of the Javary and the Itecoahy rivers, close to the equator. They came by the only possible highway, the river, and decided to settle. Soon the infinite variety of destroyers ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... (1) spectator, spectacle, suspect, aspect, prospect, expect, respectable, disrespect, inspection, speculate, special, especial, species, specify, specimen, spice, suspicion, conspicuous, despise, despite, spite; (2) specter, spectrum, spectroscope, prospector, prospectus, introspection, retrospect, circumspectly, conspectus, perspective, specie, specification, specious, despicable, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... into his chair. He said to the two bodyguards, stationed at the door, "Scotty, Rogers, go and make the arrangements to bring that damned prospector into line." ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... gold find to another prospector . . . The last went out to the grounds and prospected, with the result that he discovered the first payable gold on the West Coast, for which he obtained a ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... more from Mostyn, right out on the sandy plains, beyond the gap in the mountains which they called the Devil's Bridge, there had been a gold find. A gold prospector had been found lying in the mulga scrub with a big nugget in his hand, while his swag, when unrolled, had shown a whole ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... "habits" of the metal, so to speak, must be studied by experiment with patient labour, the most accomplished mineralogist may pass over rich alluvium without recognizing its presence, where the rude prospector of California and Australia will find an abundance of stream-gold. Evidently the proportion of "tailings" must carefully be laid down before companies are justified in undertaking the expensive operation of quartz-crushing. Hence M. Tiburce Morisot, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Agriculture and Commerce is the official who permits, approves, cancels, or suspends the right of mining, whether permanently or on trial. I may, however, at once remark that the Japanese Government has not up to the present held out much encouragement to the speculative prospector. Gold is believed to exist in considerable quantities in Yesso, and as a matter of fact, although the amount mined is still small, it is annually increasing. Coal is abundant in various parts of the country and the mines are extensively worked. In 1903 there were over ten million tons of coal produced, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... glue, and while it held things he would give much to forget, still it served him well. He had ridden past a tiny, partly caved-in dugout, months ago, where some wandering prospector had camped while he braved the barrenness of the bills and streams hereabout. Ward had dismounted and glanced into the cavelike hut. Now, after he had eaten a few mouthfuls of dinner, he rode straight over to that dugout and got the goldpan he remembered to have seen ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... unacquainted with Alaska can be aware of the almost unbearable suffering which they are capable of inflicting upon mankind. Brehm, the famous naturalist, has furnished about the best description of a luckless prospector caught in the toils. "Before a man knows," says the professor, "he is covered from head to foot with a dense swarm, blackening grey cloths and giving dark ones a strange spotted appearance. They creep to the unprotected face and neck, the bare ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... about a rumor of paying phosphate here in the Harpeth bend when I met him over in Boliver before I came to Sweetbriar. In fact, I had tried to come to look over the fields just to kill time when I nearly killed myself and fell down upon you. Do you suppose he could have sent the prospector?" Again Everett brought Uncle Tucker back to the uninteresting topic of what might lay under the fields, the top of which he ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... adopted in the Senate bill introduced by the late General Rusk, and passed at the last session of Congress. A judicious and liberal donation law, giving to the actual settler a homestead, and to the enterprising miner and "prospector" a fair security for the fruit of his labors, will at once make of Arizona a popular, thriving and wealthy State, affording new markets for the productions of our Atlantic States, and yielding annually millions in silver ...
— Memoir of the Proposed Territory of Arizona • Sylvester Mowry
... snapped Thurston crossly. Time was when Philip Thurston would not have answered any man abruptly, however great the provocation. He was only lately getting down to the real, elemental man of him; to the son of Bill Thurston, bull-whacker, prospector, follower of dim trails. He rode silently back to camp with Bob, ate his breakfast, got into dry clothes and went out and tied his slicker deliberately and securely behind the cantle of his saddle, though the sun was shining straight into his eyes and the sky ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... approaching manhood. Very likely the danger of bringing up a boy absolutely cut off from the women of his race never occurred to the father. The inevitable happened. The boy fell in love with a handsome half-breed girl, the daughter of a wandering prospector and a Sikanni squaw, and married her out of hand. The heartbroken father was himself compelled to perform the ceremony. ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... sturdy bushmen, inured to privation and hardship, and possessing unbounded confidence in their leader, though he was by no means the oldest man of the party, and not a "native." But Grainger had had great experience as an explorer and prospector, for he had been compelled to begin the battle of life when but a lad of fifteen. His father, once a fairly wealthy squatter in the colony of Victoria, was ruined by successive droughts, and died leaving his station deeply mortgaged to the bank, which ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... criminal—a fugitive from justice; but dangerous men are no novelty to the I. F. P. On the other hand, there was a possibility that it was just some political offender, driven into the desert by persecution. Or a prospector. At any rate, he would have food, or would know ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... at hand of the Bostonians is from one of them, Horace E. Mann, who for years has been a prospector and miner and who now is a resident of Phoenix. He tells that the journey westward was without particular incident until was reached, about June 15, the actual destination, the valley of the Little Colorado River, on the route of the projected ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... on in the direction whither the prospector had pointed. They rode in silence. Dawn came slowly, clearly. The peaks lifted magnificently, range after range against the rosy sky. There was no trail. They followed the possible way. The patient little cow ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... cabin he followed the winding trail that led to the valley below. The road to Saguache showed the hoofprints of a prospector's outfit, and the marks of a sleigh leading to Del Norte. The glare of the sun on the reflected snow was blinding and he drew his hat down over his eyes. He was thinking of his worthless life since leaving college. Once he ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... development of this continent was so far-reaching in extent, and so enormous in potential value, that it fairly staggers the imagination. From the landing of the Pilgrims down to the present hour the wild game has been the mainstay and the resource against starvation of the pathfinder, the settler, the prospector, and at times even the railroad-builder. In view of what the bison millions did for the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Kansas and Texas, it is only right and square that those states should now do something for the perpetual ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... prospector has unearthed in many places of southern Nevada gold-bearing rock assaying thousands of dollars to the ton, the result being the building up of cities and towns and the construction of connecting railroads to meet the demands of the growing commerce. Until recently, ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... I suppose. He wasn't the sort who would care much for an archaeologist. He cared more for a prospector going off into the hills than he did for me. And I—I admit that I am ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... turned into it and followed it for some length, finally arriving at a large spring, one of the best in the forest, which evidently had been known at some time prior to the Forest Service taking control, but now had passed into disuse. But Merritt was even more surprised to find beside the spring a prospector of the old type, with his burro and pack, evidently making camp for ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... that the incidents of his town visits were the proper thing. He would not have had them different—to look back on. They were inspiring—to write home about. He recognised all the types—the miner, the gambler, the saloon-keeper, the bad man, the cowboy, the prospector—just as though they had stepped living from the pages of his classics. They had the true slouch; they used the picturesque language. The log cabins squared with his ideas. The broncos even ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... full of coolness and upland strength, like new breath in my nostrils; and forward over the broken country, fenceless, illimitable, ran the brown road, like a ploughed ribbon of soil, into the distance, where pioneer and explorer and prospector had gone before, and now the farmer was thinly settling,—the new America growing up before my eyes! and him only by me to make me not a stranger there, with talk of absent friends and old times, though ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... beasts, for I remember noticing how their coats glistened in the sunshine. This sight was not very conducive to a good appetite, and a little farther on we saw another pathetic spectacle: a very deep trench, made in the past by some gold-prospector, had been filled in with rocky boulders, and was covered with withered ferns. Here lay those who had fallen of the Chartered Company's Forces. No doubt by now the space is enclosed as a tiny part of God's acre, but at that time the rough stones in the deep ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... been cow-puncher, prospector, proprietor of a "hotel" in Albuquerque, foreman of a ranch, sheriff, and at one time had played angel to a venturesome but poor show troupe. Beside his versatility he was well known as the man who took the stage through the Sioux ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... after their long climb from the Missouri River to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, were still seeking a practicable passage westward over that formidable barrier, and in consequence, the mountain ranchman—who, by the way, was also sometimes a prospector and frequently a hunter—having no means of shipping his produce to the outside world, depended for his market upon one or another of the many little silver-mining camps scattered ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp |
