"Placer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I wouldn't a made this trip for money if I wasn't so plumb anxious to see how Dubois saves that flour gold. You take one of these here 'canucks' and he's blamed near as good if not a better placer miner than a Chink; more ingenious and just as savin'. Say, Baldy, will you keep off my heels? If I have to tell you again about walkin' up my pant leg I aim to break your head in. It's bad enough to come down a trail so steep it wears your back hair ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... were cut down and a three-room cabin constructed. To keep this cabin was Edith Nelson's task. The task of the men was to search for gold, which they did; and to find gold, which they likewise did. It was not a startling find, merely a low-pay placer where long hours of severe toil earned each man between fifteen and twenty dollars a day. The brief Alaskan summer protracted itself beyond its usual length, and they took advantage of the opportunity, ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... find it. If some one told him that Adam and Eve were still alive, and running a stock ranch up in the Big Horn basin, he would believe it, and if it came to him as a secret that Solomon in all his glory was placer mining in a distant valley over the mountains, he would rush off to engage Solomon to drive a chariot next year in his show. Such an ability to absorb things that are not so, in a world where all men are suspicious of each other, should be encouraged. This old man comes to our quiet ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... ditches which kept it so. And in the center of the meadow, a small inclosure marked grimly the spot where lay the bones of old John Imsen. All around the man-made oasis of orchards and meadows, the sage and the sand, pushed from the river by the jumble of placer pits, emphasized by sharp contrast what man may do with the most unpromising parts of the earth's surface, once he sets himself heart and muscle to ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... the whole town was destroyed by fire, and now that the miners 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 ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... privately on the constant lookout for pockets, which occupation did not interfere in the least with the duty he owed his employer. And as the days went by he stored his mind with miscellaneous data concerning the nature of the various placer deposits and the lay of the land, against the summer when the thawed surface and the running water would permit him to follow a trace from creek-bed to ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... and practise law. His wife stayed behind until he should get a start. The gold fever was n't dead yet in those days, and Moulton had a bad attack of it. When I came to the Coast he was working in some played-out placer mines, and feeling perfectly sure that he was going to strike a fortune almost any day. When a man has once dug gold out of the ground with his own hands, he seems to be unfitted for doing anything else. It's as bad as the gambler's mania. Well, the fever got into ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... called mets or assiettes, are brought in by varlets and two of the principal squires, and in certain wedding-feasts the bridegroom walked in front of them. The dishes are placed on the table by an asseeur (placer), assisted by two servants. The latter take away the remains at the conclusion of the course, and hand them over to the squires of the kitchen who have charge of them. After the mets or assiettes the ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... You know he's always had an idea that the Yuga country was worth prospecting, but we always laughed at him. Of course it is a pocket country; but it's my opinion he found a pocket that would make many a placer look sick, before ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... San Francisco, the capital of California, but not at the period when the placer-mining fever was raging—from 1849 to 1852. San Francisco was no longer what it had been then, a caravanserai, a terminus, an inn, where for a night there slept the busy men who were hastening to the gold-fields ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... river. Henry Francis, evidently, gave Brown full credence, but others present regarded "Bed-bug Brown" as a joke. True, he was an intelligent little man. He had taught school at Graniteville several winters, and had succeeded better at this business than at placer mining on the bars of the Middle Yuba. But "Bed-bug Brown," perennial picnicker, was not a ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... me. Once it was collecting sealskins off other people's beaches, and there was zest enough in that, in view of the probability of the dory turning over, or a gunboat dropping on to you. Then there was a good deal of very genuine excitement to be got out of placer-mining in British Columbia, especially when there was frost in the ranges, and you had to thaw out your giant-powder. Shallow alluvial workings have a way of caving in when you least expect it of them. After all, however, I think I like the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... veins have been broken and weathered by natural forces. In such cases the gold is usually carried off by swiftly running water and deposited in the channel lower down. In this way "placer" deposits of gold occur. Placer deposits are sometimes very rich, but they are quickly exhausted. The first gold discovered in California was ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... grinnin' yenshee hound from up beyond the Tehachapi—way up—up toward the Sierra Nevadas, in the placer country. White prospectors ner white miners don't often work with chinks. Chinks is only good for workin' tailin's when it comes to mines. But Len he'd saved Hong Duo's life in trouble in a dump in Placerville—ol' Hangtown—and ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... lugubrious airs that he knew, always carried him back to the time when he was a car-boy at the Big Dipper Mine in Placer County, ten years before. He remembered the years he had spent there trundling the heavy cars of ore in and out of the tunnel under the direction of his father. For thirteen days of each fortnight his father was ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... signature of the Register of the Treasury! I hear that a corporation is now being formed by the title of The Harlow's Creek Greenback National Bank-bill Eel-fishing Company, to follow up, with seines and spears, our worthy friend's discovery! I learn that the news of this rich placer has spread to the golden mountains of the West, and that the exhausted intellects which have been reduced to such names for their mines as 'The Tombstone,' 'The Red Dog,' the 'Mrs. E. J. Parkhurst,' are likely now to flood us with prospectuses of the 'Eel ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... sand and gravel aggregates, placer deposits, polymetallic nodules, oil and gas fields, fish, ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... out. His keen eye saw there were mines above ground as well as below. He quietly left off placer mining, drew out some gold from a hidden purse, and, before the world of Gold City knew it, had nine hundred acres on Pine Tree Mountain, a big saw-mill going, a nice ranch home, and barns like folks back in ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... familiar with him. He never ketched a rat in his life—'peared to be above it. He never cared for nothing but mining. He knowed more about mining, that cat did, than any man I ever, ever see. You couldn't tell him noth'n' 'bout placer-diggin's—'n' as for pocket-mining, why he was just born for it. He would dig out after me an' Jim when we went over the hills prospect'n', and he would trot along behind us for as much as five mile, if we went so fur. An' he had the best judgment about mining-ground—why ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... any one gang in the world. The weather was exceedingly cold for we were only three hundred miles from the Arctic Circle. Spring came we broke camp and moved down to Dawson, sold our fur and drifted down the Yukon river to the mouth of forty mile creek. Here we turned up in search of placer mining, the short summer soon past and we returned to Dawson and fitted out for ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... only three moults, and, on the other hand, "presque toutes les races a trois mues, que nous avons experimentees, ont fait quatre mues a la seconde ou a la troisieme annee, ce qui semble prouver qu'il a suffi de les placer dans des conditions favorables pour leur rendre une faculte qu'elles avaient perdue sous ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... malheureux coeur; Puisse-je, pour charmer mes ennuis et mes peines, Souvent fuir en esprit au bord de vos fontaines, Egarer ma pensee au milieu de vos bois, Par un doux souvenir rappeler mille fois De vos Saints habitans les touchantes images, Penetrer, sur leurs pas, dans vos grottes sauvages, Me placer sur vos monts, et la, prennant l'essort, Aller chercher en Dieu ma joie, ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... Creek mine owners were usually designated. These miners all hired cooks for their camps, as they kept large numbers of men at work day and night on the Anvil Creek claims, the season being so short for placer mining in this country. Anvil Creek was only four miles away and the "Star Restaurant," as my friends had already named their proposed eating-house, would be headquarters for all the Scandinavians on ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... no rest here throughout the twenty-four hours. People wander aimlessly about the streets, eternally discussing quartz and placer-claims, and recent strikes, which here form the sole topic of conversation, like a run on zero or the cards at Monaco. Port Said is suggested by the dusty, flashy streets and cosmopolitan crowd, also by the fact that gambling saloons and even shops remain open all night, or so long as customers ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... which passes by Muleje and Gallinas, the inhabitants of those places collect the sands, from which they obtain small quantities of gold in dust. In another placer, which embraces an extension of seven leagues, they also extract some gold in dust in quantities as insignificant as those which result from the sands of ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... exist in several localities. A few placer mines have been opened on the Stikeen river, but no one knows the extent of the auriferous beds, in the absence of all 'prospecting' data. I do not believe gold mining will ever be found profitable in Russian America. The winters are long ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... placer would be found; or, on a mountainside where the porphyry was stained, he would carelessly chip off a fragment of rock, turn it up to the sun, and behold it rich in ruby silver; or, some day, the vein instead of pinching out would widen; there would be pay ore almost ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... was a lively place. Gold, or placer digging as it was called, was at its height. Steamers plied daily between San Francisco and both Stockton and Sacramento. Passengers and gold from the southern mines came by the Stockton boat; from the northern mines ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... mining camps sprung up soon after the discovery of gold, and every flat, ravine, and hill-slope echoed to pick, and shovel, and pan, and to voices of legions of men. Truly, his narration relates to a lost, an almost unremembered era in the history of the famous mining counties, Placer and Nevada. In speaking of the first relief ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... The placer mines west of Camp Crook are being opened to very satisfactory results, and, in fact, from Custer City in the south, to Deadwood in the north, all is the scene of ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... a little on our placer—just enough to keep interested. Then the supervisors decided to fix our road, and what's more, THEY DONE IT! That's the only part in this yarn that's hard to believe, but, boys, you'll have to take it on faith. They ploughed ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... thought to inquire who was the owner of The Polka Saloon. Bitterly he cursed himself for his dense stupidity. And yet, it was doubtful whether any of his band could have informed him. All that they knew of the place was that the miners of Cloudy Mountain Camp were said to keep a large amount of placer gold there; all that he had done was to acquaint himself with the best means of getting it. But his ruminations were soon dissipated by Rance, who had come so close that their feet almost touched, and was speaking in a voice that showed the quarrelsome frame of mind ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco |
