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Diggings

noun
1.
An excavation for ore or precious stones or for archaeology.  Synonym: digs.
2.
Temporary living quarters.  Synonyms: digs, domiciliation, lodgings, pad.






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"Diggings" Quotes from Famous Books



... the "Pacific Mining Company" was immediately formed, with a stock of 12,000 shares at $100 each. One thousand shares were sold immediately, and several vessels were put up at once for the Gold Bluff, the miners flocking from all parts of the diggings, to join in the adventure. The original stockholders, however,—about thirty in number—lay claim to the best parts of the beach, and have erected log cabins and laid in a large store of provisions, preparatory to washing the sand on an extensive scale. The reports of the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... taken the boat at Pierre's Portage, fifty miles farther down the river. He had come direct from the creeks, and his impressions of the motley pioneer life at the gold-diggings were so vivid that he had found an isolated corner of the deck where he could scribble them in a ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... grunted Lee. 'But I would be squatting on my diggings with a shot-gun under my arm. Al, here, can tell you a few things about Monte Devine ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... discussion, Goodyear led them by a scattered fire of personalities. Billy Darnton was going to give a bull's head breakfast at San Jacinto. Al Hemphill was coming to it all the way from New York. Charlie Bates had pulled out for the new gold diggings in the Mojave desert, rich again in anticipation, although he had to leave San Francisco secretly to escape ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... still resorted to by the Chinese, who now number 50,000 in their new country, and conduct themselves as orderly and industrious citizens. There is some talk of introducing tea-culture, for the sake of giving them employment, as their presence at the diggings is scarcely tolerated. We are soon to know more than at present of the geography and people of Borneo, for Madame Ida Pfeiffer has travelled further into that country than any other European, and is preparing a narrative ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various

... offhand fashion as he took off his overcoat. "Hello, Jeff! Thought I'd look you up. Got settled in your diggings, eh?" Before his host could answer he rattled on: "Just ran in for a moment. Had the devil of a time to find you. What's the object in getting clear off ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... shadow of the mosque of St. Sophia; for the Prophet has only forbidden the use of wine, and of a surety—Allah be praised!—this strangely-sparkling delicious liquor, which gives to the true believer a foretaste of the joys of Paradise, cannot be wine. At the diamond-fields of South Africa and the diggings of Australia the brawny miner who has hit upon a big bit of crystallised carbon, or a nugget of virgin ore, strolls to the "saloon" and shouts for champagne. The mild Hindoo imbibes it quietly, but approvingly, ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... heat of which he required to endure through forty miles of wilderness, and no chance of relief or refreshment by the way. Yet this serio-comic spectacle is not singular. Multitudes seem to have gone to the diggings with every species of encumbrance, and in a totally unsuitable garb. Splendid dress-coats and waistcoats, boots and pantaloons, but no working-clothes, nor implements for camping, and in many instances not even a cloak: everything suitable for the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various

... would like to have seen the twinkle in his eye when he heard this little point made. But GRANDOLPH busy down by the Docks, picking up his outfit. Secret of the sudden and surprising growth of the beard out now. GRANDOLPH off to the gold-diggings, and beard usually worn there. Hardly knew him when I looked in the other day at Connaught Place; trying on his new things; pair of rough unpolished boots coming over his knees; belt round his waist holding up his trousers and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various

... Philosophy of Clothes, and visible to whoso will cast eye thereon? Over much invaluable matter, that lies scattered, like jewels among quarry-rubbish, in those Paper-catacombs we may have occasion to glance back, and somewhat will demand insertion at the right place: meanwhile be our tiresome diggings therein suspended. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... Luderitzbucht were concerned, and that night Dick and four other hungry men made up for lost time. The food was good, and the champagne that washed it down excellent, and Dick, as he bade the other men "Good-night," and turned away from the hotel towards his old diggings, felt at peace with all mankind. He had still twenty pounds in his pocket, he had the professor's promise of leading another trip to the north-east; and above all, he had a thousand carats of diamonds tied tightly in a bundle made fast ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... the Strand, and then I thought I would look you up in your grimy old diggings. My word, we are going to have a storm, Herrick," as a flash of lightning lit up the ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... by the mate, a fine, daring fellow, much accustomed to roughing it on the diggings, and not the least afraid of natives, I walked up the long beach to the village, to the chief's house. The old man was seated on the platform in front of the house, and did not even deign to rise to receive us. I told him who I ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers

... On the Palmer River diggings (also in North Queensland) one William Baker testified to his principles of temperance in the following, written on the back of his "miner's right," which was nailed to a strip ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke

... set out from his "diggings" in New York without having the remotest idea where his peregrinations would carry him. It was his habit to select a starting point in advance, approach that spot by train or ship or motor, and then divest himself of all ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... bidding. Again, some slaves are bought with money, and others with praise. It matters not what the purchase-money is. The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and be bought for it. Again, it matters not what kind of work you are set on; some slaves are set to forced diggings, others to forced marches; some dig furrows, others field-works, and others graves. Some press the juice of reeds, and some the juice of vines, and some the blood of men. The fact of the captivity is the same whatever work we are set ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... for ten or twenty miles, and withall to wash down a hillside of golden gravel, and extract its precious particles. The simple individual pan-washers are the first in the field, but it soon ceases to be profitable to this class of operators, and they soon move on in search of richer "diggings." The other means are employed on greater or less scales of magnitude, by combinations of men and capital. All the forms of gold-washing run into each other, indeed; and companies, sometimes consisting of only two or three persons, ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... situated on the banks of the Vaal River, and is forty-three miles north of Kimberley. It is at present an unimportant town, but diamond diggings have been recently opened, and it is a good cattle district. It took its name from Sir Charles Warren. Soon after leaving Warrenton we crossed the Vaal River on a pontoon. Here a trooper of the Mounted ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young

... make, out here, the kind of jails that will keep Del Pinzo behind the bars," commented Nort. "If he's around these diggings he'd be the very one ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker

... experiences over a pipe that same evening; and he told me of a friend of his, a law student, who had shared diggings with him in Edinburgh. A kinder-hearted young man, Bute felt sure, could never have breathed; nor one with a tenderer, more chivalrous regard for women; and the misery this brought him, to say nothing of the irritation caused ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... after Fort Laramie was taken over by the Government, Bordeaux as sutler sold much flour and bacon to men hurrying down the South Fork to the early Colorado diggings. Meantime in his cups he often had told the mythical tale of the Gros Ventre woman—long after California, Idaho, Nevada, Montana were all afire. But one of his halfbreed children very presently had commandeered the tin cup and its contents, so that to this ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... right, as far as it goes, Tom, but I want to remind you of a little debt you owe me. When you were out of luck at Murphy's diggings I lent you twenty-five dollars, which ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger

... different if Robert was here; I guess he'd a stayed but for Archibald Grace. And helped with the chores and looked after the place; But Archie, he heard from that Eben Carew, And went wild to go off to the gold-diggings, too; And so they must up and meander out West, And now they are murdered—or missing, at best— Surprised by that bloody, marauding "Red Wing," 'Way out in the Yellowstone country, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... extream necessity, and when the weather is warm, and then do it in the morning. In this cold season you shall do well to cover the ground with the leaves of trees, straw, or short litter, to keep them warm; and every year you shall give them three dressings or half diggings; viz. in April, June, and August; this, for the first year, still after rain: The second Spring after transplanting, purge them of all superfluous shoots and scions, reserving only the most towardly for ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... habitation, or resort.] Abode — N. abode, dwelling, lodging, domicile, residence, apartment, place, digs, pad, address, habitation, where one's lot is cast, local habitation, berth, diggings, seat, lap, sojourn, housing, quarters, headquarters, resiance^, tabernacle, throne, ark. home, fatherland; country; homestead, homestall^; fireside; hearth, hearth stone; chimney corner, inglenook, ingle side; harem, seraglio, zenana^; household gods, lares et penates [Lat.], roof, household, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... was practising his profession in the city of Albany, his native place, in 1848, when reports came of the discovery of gold in California. In a short time samples of scales of the metal of the river diggings were on exhibition, sent to friends in the city in letters. Many of Colonel Stevenson's regiment had been recruited in that city. Soon these rumors were exaggerated. It was said that barrels of gold were dug by individuals named. Soon the excitement ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower

... 26th July lynch law and revolt broke out afresh in an extensive way at New Rush, the principal diggings. The Diggers' Gazette made ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz

... the same fashion as the debris, drift, and alluvium had been carried down in bygone days and cast upon its banks. A few immigrant wagons, diverted from the highways of travel by the fame of the new diggings, halted upon the slopes of Devil's Spur and on the arid flats of the Ford, and disgorged their sallow freight of alkali-poisoned, prematurely-aged women and children and maimed and fever-stricken men. Against this rude form of domesticity ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte

... diamonds of Brazil also resembled those of India in quality, being on the average better than those of the present South African mines. It may be added that even the African diamonds that are found in "river diggings" average better in quality than those of the volcanic pipes which form the principal source of the world's supply to-day. There seems to be a superabundance of iron oxide in the rocks of the African mines and in the diamonds themselves, imparting ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade

... Not until I hear the reports of my men, and the messenger or scout whom I looked for to meet us here at noon. Seen. anything of that rattler around these diggings, Professor?" ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin

... knows how, and taken up his acres—I forget how many years ago—all alone, bent double with sciatica, and with six bits in his pocket and an axe upon his shoulder. Long, useless years of seafaring had thus discharged him at the end, penniless and sick. Without doubt he had tried his luck at the diggings, and got no good from that; without doubt he had loved the bottle, and lived the life of Jack ashore. But at the end of these adventures, here he came; and, the place hitting his fancy, down he sat to make a new life of it, far from crimps and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the remainder of General Buller's force marched into Sabi Drift, and on the 26th the army, united again, advanced north for Pilgrim's Rest. Burgher's Nek and Mac-Mac diggings were reached about noon on ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson

... present publication is to gather together all the old bush songs that are worth remembering. Apart from other considerations, there are many Australians who will be reminded by these songs of the life of the shearing sheds, the roar of the diggings townships, and the campfires of the overlanders. The diggings are all deep sinking now, the shearing is done by contract, and the cattle are sent by rail to market, while newspapers travel all over Australia; so there will be no more bush ballads composed and ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson

... workmanlike style as any miner, and so boring deep notches into the edge of the bed. When a blackbird had made a good hole he came back to visit it at various times of the day, and kept a strict watch. If he found any other blackbird or thrush infringing on his diggings, he drove him away ferociously. Never were such works carried on as at the edge of that seaweed; they moved a bushel of it. To the eye there seemed nothing in it but here and there a small white worm; but they found plenty, and ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... to make no valuable discoveries. He could buy their half-worked-out placers. The "river-bed" they sold him when its chances of yielding were deemed desperate. When the golden fruitage of the banks was reduced to a dollar per day, they became "China diggings." But wherever "John" settled he worked steadily, patiently and systematically, no matter whether his ten or twelve hours' labor brought fifty cents or fifty dollars; for his industry is of an untiring mechanical character. In the earlier and flusher ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... our hearts were bolder, And if Dame Fortune frowned Our swags we'd lightly shoulder And tramp to other ground. But golden days are vanished, And altered is the scene; The diggings are deserted, The camping-grounds are green; The flaunting flag of progress Is in the West unfurled, The mighty bush with iron rails Is tethered ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson

... water, Isaac was successful; he found the well of water that followed the Patriarchs. Abraham had obtained it after three diggings. Hence the name of the well, Beer-sheba, "the well of seven diggings," the same well that will supply water to Jerusalem and its ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... He met Atkins and the other young sailor, his partner, before they left their ship. They were in the store, buying various things, and father got to know them pretty well. Then they ran away to the diggings—you simply couldn't keep a crew in those times—and he didn't see them again for a good while. Then they came in one day and showed him specimens from a claim they had back in the mountains. They were mighty good specimens, and what ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Magnificently scowling ruffians in sheepskin coats. In fact, a movie staged for my benefit. I was afraid they would ring down the curtain before I had had enough. It had no meaning. When I got back to my diggings I tried to put down what I had just seen, and I swear there's more ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... the following spring a party of miners on their way to new diggings passed along the Gulch, and straying through the deserted shanties found in one of them the body of Hiram Beeson, stretched upon a bunk, with a bullet hole through the heart. The ball had evidently been fired from the opposite side of the ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... men climbed back to their tents on the ridge, cursing their luck—or the want of it—to satisfy their hunger. Then they wandered with one accord to the flat where Cudlip's Rest was situated, and assisted in making the only "pile" which was ever amassed on the diggings of Boulder Creek. ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... leaving the camp they sighted the pitted shores of their own diggings. Sitting in the McMurdos' wagon they had speculated gayly on Low's surprise. Susan, on the seat beside Glen, had been joyously full of the anticipation of it, wondered what he would say, and then fell to imagining it with closed lips and dancing eyes. When the road reached the last concealing ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... "passenger" and "cargo" safely aboard, some distance behind the Racers, who passed before long the famous Paystreak Diggings, which had yielded their many millions, and were soon beyond the groups of miners' cabins on ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling

... or two after that we picked up a Denver man at the cross roads, and he told us a good deal about the country and the Gregory Diggings. He seemed a very entertaining person and a man well posted in the affairs of Colorado. By and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... me blush, Phil. Then, if I had to stay down in these diggings long, I'd sure make it a point to lost some weight. It ain't exactly pleasant you see, knowing that even the wild critters are having their mouths water at sight of you. But look at that big bass I yanked ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... this this morning, so must look sharp. Roland Stanley was away on a fishing expedition. We saw his daughter. She said her father would probably be home on Friday or Saturday, so we decided to lie in wait for him in diggings, and to call again on Monday. I had no idea his place was so far away from Montreal—six-and-a-quarter miles by rail including the Victoria Bridge, which puts a lot on to the fare, and a good two miles by road. His name was not in ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn

... an Australian explorer; after explorations at Stonehenge, surveyed the pyramids and temples of Ghizeh in 1881-82; excavated for the Egyptian Exploration Fund Nankratis, Am, and Defenneh; has achieved many other important works of the kind, and issued a popular work, "Ten Years' Diggings ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... its privilege of free seed distribution to the United States Quartermaster Corps. So, if you haven't received your little package of bean seed, pea seed, anise seed, tomato seed, lettuce seed, pansy seed, begonia seed, and what not, trot right up to the supply sergeant's diggings and ask him when ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces

... scattered here and there, intent upon working their claims, gave it a picturesque appearance, which it has lost now. It was then a more important place than at present, however, for the surface diggings are exhausted, and it is best known-to-day by its vicinity to the famous Calaveras grove ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger

... identification was not easy, for much of the gold was found quite loose in the form of sovereigns and nuggets and dust. The dust was ordered to be sent up with the 'dirt' that surrounded it, and a process of gold-washing was instituted, after the regular diggings fashion, with a bowl and water. Tons of 'dirt' were sent up and washed in this way, and a large quantity of gold saved. The agent showed me the bowl that was used on this occasion. He also showed me sovereigns that had been ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... of transit subside under the surge of population toward the new State of Oregon, or to the gold-diggings on the head-waters of the South Fork of the Platte, an element must permeate Utah which would be fatal to the supremacy of the Church. That depends, as has been so often repeated, upon isolation. Already the presence of the army with its crowd of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... now too late in the season to reach the Salmon River mines, five hundred miles across the mountains, and it was four hundred miles to Salt Lake, the nearest supply post; therefore, most of the men joined this little army of prospectors in Montana. Some of them drifted to the Grasshopper diggings, soon to be known under the name of Bannack—one of the wildest mining-camps of ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough

... come to the queer part of the business. I was in diggings out Hampstead way, 17 Potter's Terrace. Well, I was sitting doing a smoke that very evening after I had been promised the appointment, when up came my landlady with a card which had 'Arthur Pinner, Financial Agent,' printed upon it. I had never heard ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... I'm cut out for just such an existence as this; to live four floors up in an attic, get my own breakfast, and have a charwoman to do for me. I should be awfully bored with an establishment. I'm quite content with a little diggings ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... maneuver. What chance would your soldiers have against a shower of jungle seed? You would only be sending them to destruction. No, the only way is for someone familiar with those old underground diggings to enter them, locate the birds and the ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg

... a red-shirted, patriarchal-looking man, a man who had washed his first pan in the Californian diggings in the ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... be no rest in San Francisco till this wayward creature had its will and was safe inside. That night Donald had a serious talk with the monkey as it sat upright in its chair at supper. He told it that if it would behave itself he would take it up to the Rocky Mountains to the gold diggings. The monkey seemed to understand, for it put down a lump of cheese it was about to eat, skipped off its chair, and nestled against Big Donald's side. Only one other thing happened that night: Donald gave the monkey its name. He called ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond

... prisoner: He had recently been a resident of New Jerusalem, on the north fork of the Little Stony, but had come to the newly discovered placers of Mammon Hill immediately before the "rush" by which the former place was depopulated. The discovery of the new diggings had occurred opportunely for Mr. Gilson, for it had only just before been intimated to him by a New Jerusalem vigilance committee that it would better his prospects in, and for, life to go somewhere; and the list of places to which he could safely ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... not exactly what we should call 'diggings' in London, are they?" she said to the Princess, who stood by her side, delighted at the pleasure of her friend. "We often read of poor penny-a-liners in their garrets; but I don't think any penny-a-liner ever had such a garret as ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... 28th of July, we came into water colored and of a lighter shade than any we had seen. The cause of this is said to be the immense amount of mud washed down from the gold-diggings through the Sacramento River; I can not say whether this is true or not. We hoped to get into San Francisco in time to dine the next day; but a calm dissipated all such anticipations, and we lay off and on by the Farallone Islands all the night of ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson

... home from the old bush school how we were sometimes startled by a bearded apparition, who smiled kindly down on us, and whom our mother introduced, as we raked off our hats, as "An old mate of your father's on the diggings, Johnny." And he would pat our heads and say we were fine boys, or girls—as the case may have been—and that we had our father's nose but our mother's eyes, or the other way about; and say that the baby was the dead spit of its mother, ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... separate the "spiritual" gold which faintly streaks the huge mass of impure ore of fable, legend, and mysticism. Each man, it seems has his own particular spade and mattock in his "spiritual faculty"; so off with you to the diggings in these spiritual mines of Ophir. You will say, Why not stay at home, and be content at once, with the advocates of the absolute sufficiency of the internal oracle, listen to its responses exclusively? ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... I have never fully realised how great an ass a man can be. When I think that this morning I scurried through what might have been a decent breakfast, left my comfortable diggings, and was cooped up in a train for seven hours, that I am now driving in a pelting rain through, so far as I can see for the mist, what appears to be a howling wilderness, I ask myself if I am still in possession of my senses. I ask myself why I should commit such ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... in New York two weeks from today, the 24th. Of course I shall go to my old diggings. Telephone me there, so that I can see you as soon as possible. I am looking forward to a real dinner, at a real restaurant, with the realest girl in the world opposite me the first day I strike New ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... thus made. The Carthaginians then built counter-tunnels and came upon many workers who were unaware of what the other side was doing. These they killed, and also destroyed many by hurling blazing firewood into the diggings. Some of the allies now, burdened by the strain of the siege and displeased because their superiors did not come down with their full wages, made propositions to the Romans to betray the place. Hamilcar discovered their plot but ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... second half of the nineteenth century, we are to have a revolution in prices similar to that which took place in the sixteenth century can be answered only hypothetically. The gold diggings now most productive will, probably, as we may judge from analogous cases in the past, be soon exhausted.(863) But it is entirely possible that, for a long series of years, other diggings will be found equally rich. It is almost certain that the restless activity ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... eldest son—even though that baronet be the least ancestral man of mark whom it suits the convenience of a First Minister to recommend to the Sovereign for exaltation over the rank of Mister—was ever beheld in, unless he had taken flight to the gold-diggings. Was this a position in which the heir of the Chillinglys, a distinguished family, whose coat-of-arms dated from the earliest authenticated period of English heraldry under Edward III. as Three Fishes azure, could be placed without grievous slur on the cold and ancient ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... emerged into notice as a vital political factor, when the spread of the United States to the Pacific raised the question of rapid and secure communication between our two great seaboards. The Mexican War, the acquisition of California, the discovery of gold, and the mad rush to the diggings which followed, hastened, but by no means originated, the necessity for a settlement of the intricate problems involved, in which the United States, from its positions on the two seas, has the predominant interest. But, though predominant, ours is not the sole interest; though ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... frozen desert of the Trans-Baikal Provinces, they had been driven like cattle until the remnant that had survived the horrors of the awful journey reached the desolate valley of the Kara and were finally halted at the Lower Diggings. ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... assented, 'and after that we can give another dinner and rout at my diggings. Just a sort of return match, ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... years the wrecks of their wagons, the bones of their oxen and horses, and the graves of many of the men were to be seen along the route. This route was from Independence in Missouri, up the Platte River, over the South Pass, past Great Salt Lake, and so to "the diggings." ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... buried beneath the soil, and of such strange and puzzling forms as to defy as yet any definite conjecture of their character. No doubt similar works, with similar remains of implements, ornaments, querns, charred corn, etc., will yet be found by similar diggings on other Scottish hills; and at length we may obtain adequate data for fixing their nature and object, and perhaps even their date. Certainly every Scotch antiquary must heartily wish that the excellent example of earnest and enlightened research set by Mr. Neish was followed ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... Tom Towers may approve; let church and state, law and physic, commerce and agriculture, the arts of war, and the arts of peace, all listen and obey, and all will be made perfect. Has not Tom Towers an all-seeing eye? From the diggings of Australia to those of California, right round the habitable globe, does he not know, watch, and chronicle the doings of everyone? From a bishopric in New Zealand to an unfortunate director of ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... of men who had clubbed together and purchased a waggon, and started, leaving their wives and families behind them. In others they were composed of whole families, who had sold off farms or businesses in the east in the assurance of acquiring a fortune at the gold-diggings. Around the little settlement the plain was dotted with the white tilts of the waggons, mingled with the tents which had been extemporised of sail-cloth, tarpaulins, ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... miners, with pick, shovel, and pan for washing out gold from the gravel it was found in, started out "prospecting" for "pay-dirt." The gold-diggings were usually along the rivers, and this surface, or "placer," mining was done by shovelling the "pay-dirt" into a pan or a wooden box called a cradle, and rocking or shaking this box from side to side while pouring water over the earth. The heavy gold, either ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton

... while I wear the uniform—and a citizen can't quit the Force. That puts me out of Earth's jurisdiction. I can't even cable for funds, and I guess I'm too old to start squeezing money out of citizens. I was coming to ask whether you had room in your diggings for a guest—and I'm hoping now that my ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey

... wizard Pinkerton. Dollars of mine were tacking off the shores of Mexico, in peril of the deep and the guardacostas; they rang on saloon counters in the city of Tombstone, Arizona; they shone in faro-tents among the mountain diggings: the imagination flagged in following them, so wide were they diffused, so briskly they span to the turning of the wizard's crank. But here, there, or everywhere I could still tell myself it was all mine, and—what was more convincing—draw substantial dividends. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... offer of marriage, to the young lady herself. And look, where are her own thoughts, represented by the knave of clubs; they are far away with the old lover, that dark man (king of spades) who, as is plainly shown by his being attended by the nine of diamonds, is prospering at the Australian diggings or elsewhere. Let us shuffle the cards once more, and see if the dark man, at the distant diggings, ever thinks of his old flame, the club-complexioned young lady in England. No! he does not. Here are his thoughts (the knave of spades), directed to this fair, but rather ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... visiting—stopping with her nurse and my two maids for a change at the Herion Arms—me having been recommended sea-air by the doctors for tonsils in the throat. The house is advertised as an up-to-date hotel in the ABC Railway Guide, but diggings more wretched I never struck, and you do fetch up in some queer places on tour in the Provinces, let alone the States," says Red Umbrella, tossing the wistaria-wreathed hat. "Which may be a surprise to people who think it must be nothing ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... were the rest of the old-timers, the men of Forty Mile and Circle City. At the time of the discovery, nearly all of them were over to the west at work in the old diggings or prospecting for new ones. As they said of themselves, they were the kind of men who are always caught out with forks when it rains soup. In the stampede that followed the news of Carmack's strike very few old miners took part. They were not there to take part. But the men who did go ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... diggings?' I suggests. I like to see a youngster with the spirit of adventure in him. It shows grit ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome

... were the old placer diggings. Elaborate little ditches for the deflection of water, long cradles for the separation of gold, decayed rockers, and shining in the sun the tons and tons of pay dirt which had been turned over pound by pound in the concentrating of its treasure. Some of the old cabins still stood. It was ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... the history of the winning of the West. The story as told in this book is a vivid one, made more valuable and interesting because Colonel Stokes writes of his own experiences. He was one of the first to reach the new gold diggings in the seventies, and he saw the whole development from the early exciting days, on during the mad rush to Deadwood, to the discovery of some of the greatest gold ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... outbidding by the dealers. Work thus becomes very expensive for the archaeologist, who is sometimes called upon to pay L10 or L20 in a day. The system has also another disadvantage, namely, that the workmen are apt to bring antiquities from far and near to "discover" in their diggings in order to obtain a good price for them. Nevertheless, it would seem to be the most successful of the systems. In the Government excavations it is usual to employ a number of overseers to watch for the small finds, ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... soon after my marriage, which was in 1818, some years before he took to 'peeping', and before diggings were commenced under his direction. These were ideas he gained later. The stone which he afterward used was in the possession of Jack Belcher of Gibson, who obtained it while at Salina, N. Y., engaged ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... no means common in Yorkshire, but many of the round ones that have been thoroughly examined reveal no traces of metal, stone implements only being found in them.[1] In Mr. Thomas Bateman's book, entitled "Ten Years' Diggings," there are details of two long barrows, sixty-three circular ones, and many others that had been already disturbed, which were systematically opened by Mr. James Ruddock of Pickering. The fine collection of urns and other relics are, Mr. Bateman states, in his ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... had in regard to gold mining was in Ballarat, when a well-known miner and business man in that pretty town took me round the old alluvial diggings and pointed out the most celebrated claims. These (in 1879) were, of course, deserted or left to an occasional Chinese "fossicker," who rewashed the rejected pay dirt, which occasionally has enough gold in it to satisfy the easily-pleased Mongolian. I ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... accusation of theft foolishly leaves England for America. He works his passage before the mast, joins a small band of hunters, crosses a tract of country infested with Indians to the Californian gold diggings, and is successful both as digger ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... to the queer part of the business. I was in diggings out Hampstead way—17, Potter's Terrace, was the address. Well, I was sitting doing a smoke that very evening after I had been promised the appointment, when up came my landlady with a card which had 'Arthur Pinner, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... Porter's ranch on the slopes toward the valley. Facing ahead he caught, faint and thin, the roar of the Crystal Star's stamp mill. Over to the right—the road would loop down toward it at the next turning—was Columbus, gutted and dying slowly among its abandoned diggings. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... were drifting to other camps, few of the shacks were rebuilt. Of the six thousand that had been, scarcely threescore remained. A few trappers ran their lines out from the town, a few men had placer claims in the old diggings, two or three woodsmen made precarious livings as guides for such wealthy men as came to hunt moose and caribou, and Bradleyburg's course was run. The winter cold had triumphed at last, and its curse was over the city from October ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... of the worst scoundrels ever known around these diggings," replied the officer. "They've been jumping from one county into another, when pushed; and in the end Hand, here, and myself concluded we'd just join our forces. We've got a posse to the south, and another working to the north; but we happened to strike the ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson

... good grub along," chuckled Obed. "I was on my way home at the time I glimpsed your fire; and bein' full o' wonder concernin' who could be around these diggings right now I crept up to spy on ye. But say, soon's I glimpsed your crowd, and saw that you was only a bunch o' boys, why I felt easier, 'cause I knew then you couldn't mean to ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie

... Geta in A.D. 203, to commemorate victories. It was once surmounted by a brazen chariot with six horses, on which stood Severus, crowned by Victory. The pavement of the Forum, which has been laid bare by recent diggings, lies some twenty feet lower than the level of the street which now passes at the side of the diggings. Near the northern end stands the Column of Phocas, 54 feet high, which was erected in 608 in honor of the tyrant Phocas, of the Eastern Empire. All around ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner

... of the above, ed. at King's Coll., London, and Oxf., which he left without graduating, and betook himself to the Australian gold-diggings, being afterwards in the mounted police. On his return in 1858 he devoted himself industriously to literature, and wrote a number of novels of much more than average merit, including Geoffrey Hamlyn (1859), The Hillyars and the Burtons (1865), Ravenshoe (1861), and Austin Elliot ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... that she had been freshly aspersed by the objectionable Seekamp. "I offered," she said, "though merely a woman, to meet him with pistols, but the cur who attacks a lady's character runs away from my challenge. He says he will drive me from the Diggings. Well, I intend to turn the tables, and to make Seekamp de-camp. I very much regret," she added, "having been compelled to assert myself at the expense of Mr. Seekamp, but, really it was not my fault. His attacks on my art were most ungentlemanly. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... Australia to dig gold in 1847. We drove an ox team into the interior with other prospectors doing the same until we came to diggings. The men would dig and then "cradle" the soil for the gold. This cradle was just like a baby's cradle only it had a sieve in the bottom. One man would have a very long handled dipper with which he would dip water from a dug well. He only dipped and the other man stirred with a stick and rocked. ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... repeated. "No girl around these diggings ever handled that tidy little sum. Read on, Jane, it may be a will or something, and we may come in for ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... augmented by the arrival of two small detachments under command respectively of two well-known officers, Inspectors Scarth and Harper. And not any too soon were these precautions taken, for Constantine lets light in on the kind of people who began to head for the diggings when he says in his graphic way, "A considerable number of people coming in from the Sound cities appear to be the sweepings of the slums and the result of a general jail delivery. Heretofore goods could be cached on the side of the ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... Norwegians, and perhaps a few Portuguese and Italians. The hardiest seamen, and the most unmanageable, were the Liverpool packet rats who were lured from their accustomed haunts to join the clippers by the magical call of the gold-diggings. There were not enough deep-water sailors to man half the ships that were built in these few years, and the crimps and boarding-house runners decoyed or flung aboard on sailing day as many men as were demanded, and any drunken, broken landlubber was good enough to be shipped as an able seaman. ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine

... fever was running high in Australia, and each colony was eager to discover new diggings within its borders. Robert Austin, Assistant Surveyor-General of Western Australia, was instructed to take charge of an inland exploring party to search for pastoral country, and to examine the ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... received in England of fresh discoveries; these were in Victoria. The immediate consequence of the gold discoveries was disadvantageous to the colonies, as men of all trades and professions forsook their callings to repair to the "diggings," and the shepherds abandoned their flocks, so that hundreds of thousands of stock were lost, or perished. The ultimate effect upon British Australia was, however, most prosperous—several of the colonies of that vast region becoming enriched with mineral wealth. Although the public announcement ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... recently, Mr. Krueger had said he would give the mines the chance of establishing themselves before a percentage should be imposed upon their returns; and that no tax would be levied till the diggings had been completed, and the machinery set up. It appeared to him, however, that the government intended to appropriate some of their profits, although it had given no facilities for the preparatory works on the mines, during which it should be remembered that their capital ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot

... diggings do?" he suggested pleasantly. "I've taken a suite in the rue Vernet, just back of the Hotel Astoria, where we can be as private as you please, if you've ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... the direction of bachelor's diggings and work in London. He thrust them aside and bought what was supposed to be a very good and flourishing practice at Birmingham. Unfortunately Mrs. Grant took a violent dislike to Birmingham. Their house was gloomy and got on her nerves; the air, ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson

... been angry, he would have laughed out-right. "Yorke," said he, "did you ever hear of a sickness that fell suddenly upon this kingdom, some years ago? It was called the gold fever. Hundreds and thousands, as you phrase it, caught the mania, and flocked out to the Australian gold-diggings, to 'make their fortunes' by picking up gold. Boy!"—laying his hand on Roland's shoulder—"how many of those, think you, instead of making their fortunes, only went out ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... particular, such as the Welcome Nugget, 184 lbs. 9 oz.; the Welcome Stranger, a surface nugget, 190 lbs. after smelting; the Braidwood specimen nugget, 350 lbs., two-thirds gold; besides many other large masses of almost virgin gold which have been obtained from time to time in the alluvial diggings." ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... had lived alone he had never felt as if his art, or perhaps rather his method of giving himself to it, had any trait of effeminacy. It had seemed quite natural to him to be shut up in his own "diggings," isolated, with only a couple of devoted servants, and golden-haired Fan in the distance, being as natural as he was. It had never occurred to him that his life was ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... Tony Bings told his story, how he had come to that neighborhood and "struck it rich," as he confided to Jack Wumble. He was very enthusiastic about the diggings back of his cabin, and in the end got Wumble to promise to join him in his hunt for ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield

... to Oxford after that," he continued. "I've diggings there, don't you know? An old chum of mine's a fellow of Magdalen. I was just in time for eights' week. A magnificent walk-over for our fellows. Ever seen the race? No? Oh, I say, that's too bad. You must come over for it, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... season. May passed, no snow—June the same, only heavy, I may say, nearly constant showers of rain. 'A glorious year,' the diggers called it. 'Never such a season for work since the diggings broke out. Two months' work at a time when there is never any water. O, what a wash-up there ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... diminution of his income. The millionaire sees rivals springing up on all sides from the mountain of gold. Many in every class, who are at ease in their circumstances, and would fain have things remain as they are, look with dislike on a state of things so new, and wish that the 'diggings' in California, and the gold region of Australia, had never been disturbed by spade ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various

... be called Punkhassett—which is Injun for 'The last place the Almighty made'—and if you've read the circulars of the land company that's booming Punkhassett this year, you'll remember that the principal attraction of them diggings is the 'magnificent water privileges.' 'Twas the water privileges that had hooked me. Clams was thick on the flats at low tide, and fish was middling plenty in the bay. I had two weirs set; one a deep-water weir, a half mile beyond the bar, and t'other just inside ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... clapboards. Here also we were shown many specimens of gold, of a coarser grain than that found at Mormon Island. The next day we crossed the American River to its north side, and visited many small camps of men, in what were called the "dry diggings." Little pools of water stood in the beds of the streams, and these were used to wash the dirt; and there the gold was in every conceivable shape and size, some of the specimens weighing several ounces. Some ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... name—nor I yours. My own," he added, as she stood unresponsive, "is Ryder—Jack Ryder. You can always get a letter to me at the Agricultural Bank. That is the quickest way. My friend, McLean there, always knows where my diggings are. When in Cairo I stop with him; or ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... girls were in the saddle, hovering about the new gold diggings, fascinated at the way new mines seemed to spring up ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope

... gentlemen, I delayed there to participate in the first public celebration of our national anniversary at that fort, but on the 5th resumed the journey and proceeded twenty-five miles up the American fork to a point on it now known as the Lower Mines, or Mormon Diggings: The hill-sides were thickly strewn with canvas tents and bush arbors; a store was erected, and several boarding shanties in operation. The day was intensely hot, yet about two hundred men were at work in the full glare of the sun, washing for gold—some with ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... him or his rival, left one lost in admiration. And then, not to waste a moment! To reach town one evening, and next morning by ten o'clock to have that expert safe in the launch on his way up the river to the phosphate diggings! The very audacity of such unscrupulousness commanded my respect: successful dishonor generally wins louder applause than successful virtue. But to be married to her! Oh! not for worlds! Charley might meet such ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... valley near the railway; and mine host, a jovial Irish blade of the good old "Donnybrook Fair" variety, who came here in 1851, during the great rush to the gold fields, and, failing to make his fortune in the "diggings," wisely decided to send for his family and settle down quietly on a piece of land, in preference to returning to the "ould sod."He turns out to be a "bit av a sphort meself," and, after showing me a number of minor ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... principal guide, was a Frenchman, who had been in the Southwest at least since 1832, when he visited the Pima villages and Casa Grande. In 1862, while trapping, he was one of the discoverers of the La Paz gold diggings. The following year he was with the Peeples party that found gold on Rich Hill, in central Arizona. Thereafter he was an army scout. He died at ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... Mountain gold excitement broke out, more than twenty years ago, and people painted "PIKE'S PEAK OR BUST" on the canvas covers of their wagons and started for the diggings, they established a "trail" or "trace" leading in a south-westerly direction from the old one ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various

... if I had been heard from, I would have heard from you fellows—and I absolutely didn't want to hear. Nothingnothing. That would simply have kept me from exploiting my diggings here. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... father found what he was looking for and was on the point of achieving his every dream, when something happened. Then three men simply disappeared from the mining camp, announcing that they had failed and were going to hunt new diggings. That was all. One of them was ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... peat-holes—the latter from twelve to twenty feet deep—formed extensive water-basins. Some of you will remember the turf diggings in the great bog in Ireland, as we passed through it on our way to Killarney. The peat was not dug out in trenches, but the entire surface of the land was skimmed off, just as workmen in the city dig away ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic

... House,' near Sandyford Place. You promise? Good! Let us take a little stroll before we turn in—I feel I want a breath of fresh air—and I will tell you the experience I once had there. It is exactly two years ago, and I was on tour here in The Green Bushes. All the usual theatrical 'diggings' had been snapped up long before I arrived, and, not knowing where else to go, I went to No.—Sandyford Place, which I saw advertised in one of the local papers as a first-class private hotel with very moderate charges. ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... he broached his scheme gently to the doctor and Mrs. Quackenboss. He remarked that he was connected with one of the biggest financial concerns in the Southern hemisphere; and that he would pay Elihu fifteen hundred a year to represent him at the diggings. ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... contraband dealers in the larger towns. The government forbids private traffic in gold dust, and punishes offences with severity; but the profits are large and tempting. Every gold miner must send the product of his diggings to the government establishment at Barnaool, where it is smelted and assayed. The owner receives its money value, minus the Imperial tax of ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... biscuit, and there it wasn't so rotten. Rather a mother-in-law I think, she is—bally old booming grenadier—topping sort—no end of fun. We palled up immensely and I quite forgot the Jackson chap till it was time for him to drive me back to these diggings. Rather sulky he was, I fancy; uppish sort. Told him the old one was quite like old Caroline, dowager duchess of Clewe, but couldn't tell if it pleased him. Seemed to like it and ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... "Why you pretended not to recognize the photograph of the young fellow you toted around these diggings ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... about the worst sins of the gold-seekers. Any one who objected to be saluted as "mate!" or who was crazy enough to dream of wearing a long black coat or a tall black hat, would find life harassing at the diggings. But, at any rate, in New Zealand diggers did not use revolvers with the playful frequency of the Californians of Mr. Bret Harte. Nor did they shoe the horse of their first Member of Parliament with gold, or do a variety of the odd things done in Australian gold-fields. They laughed heartily ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... now, dear!" he said to her on the tenth day as they sat together in the sun before the home cave. "A mighty close call for you—and for the boy, too! Without that good old goat what mightn't have happened? She'll be a privileged character for life in these diggings." ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... to the hospital, where an orderly made lovely beds for us on stretchers, with brown blankets and pillows, in the theatre, and labelled the door "Operation," in case any one should disturb us. At 6 we went to our respective diggings for a wash and breakfast, and reported to Matron at 8. We have been two days and two nights in our clothes; food where, when, and what one could get; one wash only on a station platform at a tap which a sergeant kindly pressed for me while I washed! ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... placer gold and rock "float" at our camp and made quite a clean-up that fall, returning to Sitka with a "gold-poke" sufficiently plethoric to start a stampede to the new diggings. Both placer and quartz locations were made and a brisk "camp" was built the next summer. This town was first called Harrisburg for one of the prospectors, and afterwards Juneau for the other. The great Treadwell gold quartz mine was located three miles from Juneau in 1881, and others ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young

... side, then all on board are safe. If the wind catches the sails on the other side, then all on board must perish. And so it all depends upon which surface of certain square yards of canvas the uncertain breeze shall strike, whether John Smith, who is coming home from the diggings with twenty thousand pounds, shall go down and never be heard of again by his poor mother and sisters away in Scotland,—or whether he shall get safely back, a rich man, to gladden their hearts, and buy a pretty little place, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... said Uncle Sylvester. "Well, in those days there was a scarcity of money in the diggings. Gold dust there was in plenty, but no COIN. You can fancy it was a bother to weigh out a pinch of dust every time you wanted a drink of whiskey or a pound of flour; but there was no other legal tender. Pretty soon, however, a lot of gold and silver pieces found their way into circulation in ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... before the August Bank Holiday. We were tired and hungry, we same three, and when we got to Datchet we took out the hamper, the two bags, and the rugs and coats, and such like things, and started off to look for diggings. We passed a very pretty little hotel, with clematis and creeper over the porch; but there was no honeysuckle about it, and, for some reason or other, I had got my mind fixed ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... reckless miners, just from the diggings, clambered to the tops of the houses nearest to the fire, and dashed the water on the roof and sides, and by this means held the flames in check until other lines were formed. In half an hour nearly fifteen hundred buckets were at work, and thrice that ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... Mrs. Yule at Palermo, deeply interested in Scylla and Charybdis, Etna and the metopes of Selinus. His interest in Greek art had been shown, not only in a course of lectures, but in active support to archaeological explorations. He said once, "I believe heartily in diggings, of all sorts." Meeting General L.P. di Cesnola and hearing of the wealth of ancient remains in Cyprus then newly discovered, Mr. Ruskin placed L1,000 at his disposal. General di Cesnola was able, in April, 1875, to announce that in spite of the confiscation of half the treasure-trove by ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... western verge of the mineral zone, but in the fifties there were, rich placer diggings in the immediate vicinity. There are some remarkably solid buildings of that period, in the old portion of the town, which, as customary, is situated in the bottom of the winding valley or ravine. Practically a new town, called "East Auburn," has ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley

... Fuzzy had a nap on Pappy Jack's bed. Jack took the manipulator up to the diggings, put off a couple more shots, uncovered more flint and found another sunstone. It wasn't often that he found stones on two successive days. When he returned to the camp, Little Fuzzy was picking another land-prawn apart in front of the ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... read it one might have thought Mr. William Gum had gone out under the most favourable auspices. He was in Australia; had gone up to seek his fortune at the gold-diggings, and was making money rapidly. In a short time he should refund with interest the little sum he had borrowed from Goldsworthy and Co., and which was really not taken with any ill intention, but was more an ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... such luxury, Albert," said the old man, as he gazed around the comfortably appointed apartment. "You ought to see my cabin at Murphy's diggings. I reckon your servant would turn up ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger



Words linked to "Diggings" :   digs, living quarters, plural form, lodgings, plural, excavation, quarters



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