"Diggings" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... owners; but this matter of 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 kept as curious specimens. Some of them were partly ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... ages. The Neolithic people buried in long barrows which are by 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
... came hurrying through, some stopping barely long enough to repeat the maddening tales that had started them off to the diggings with pick and shovel. Each new rumor increased the exodus of gold-seekers; and by the end of the first week in August, when the messenger arrived with the long-hoped-for report of the ratification of the treaty of peace, and General Mason's ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... shrugged. In the East crow is a rough synonym for thief. "You're at liberty to return to your diggings forward with that impression," he replied coolly. "When we get to Singapore," rising slowly to his height until his eyes were level with Mallow's, "when we get to Singapore, I'm going to ask you for that fifty pounds, earned in ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... fifty miles East and West, from the River Wisconsin to about twenty miles south of Galena. It was purchased by the American Government about fifteen years ago, the northern portion from the Winnebagos, and the southern from the Sioux and Fox Indians. The Indians used to work the diggings to a small extent, bringing the lead which they obtained to exchange with the traders. As may be supposed, they raised but little, the whole work of digging and smelting being carried on by the squaws. After the land was surveyed a portion ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... first instance where "ancient diggings"—as they are familiarly called in the Lake Superior region—were ever recognized as such; and this artificial cavern presents the most conclusive proofs that a people in the remote past worked those mines. Upon the discovery of this mine, attention was at once directed to numerous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... 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 the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... high to prevent any 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, while for only the really valuable discoveries ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... of perpetual motion, Full of bother And pother, Would make paralytic old Bridget A Fidget. So you see (to my notion), Better leave our downy Diminutive browny Alone, near his "diggings;" Ever free to pursue, Rush round, and renew His loved vaulting Unhalting, His whirling, And curling, And twirling, And swirling, And his ways, on the whole So unsteady! 'Pon my soul, Having gazed Quite amazed, On each wonderful antic And ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... with a bale or two of wool, and hardly hands enough to reef topsails in a gale. Nor was this the worst; for not the crew only, but, in many cases, captain and officers as well, would join in the stampede to the diggings; and we found Hobson's Bay the congested asylum of all manner of masterless and deserted vessels. I have a lively recollection of our skipper's indignation when the pilot informed him of this disgraceful fact. Within ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... men 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
... 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 salt ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the threshold. With the exception of Pisgah and Hugenot, all were clothed in the relics of their poverty, but their hairs were curled, and they wore some recovered articles of jewelry. They had thus the guise of a colony of barbers coming up from the gold diggings, full of nuggets ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... 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 ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... of the writer's earlier novels, "Prince Hagen", the hero is a Nibelung out of Wagner's "Rheingold", who leaves his diggings in the bowels of the earth, and comes up to look into our superior civilization. The thing that impresses him most is what he calls "the immortality idea". The person who got that up was a world-genius, he exclaims. "If you can ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... On the diggings near the Avoca River the lizard's future master had, as was the digger's custom, come out of his hole, or shaft, at eleven o'clock for a short half-hour's rest between breakfast and the midday meal. He threw himself down in a half-sitting ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... theatre or to stupid dinner parties. He hadn't the faintest idea that a place where a fellow did nothing but sleep and eat bacon and eggs could be looked upon as a "home." He had thought of it only as an apartment, or "diggings." Now he loved his home and everything that was in it. How he would miss the stealthy blue linen nurses, and the expressionless doctors, and the odour of broths and soups, and the scent of roses, and the swish of petticoats, and the elevating presence ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... half-liquid mud, formed of the water and finely powdered earth that was carried off by the sluice boxes during gold washing, and eventually collected in a broad pool or lagoon before the outlet. There was a pool of this kind a quarter of a mile away, where there were "diggings" worked by Patsey's father, and thither they proceeded along the ridge in single file. When it was reached they solemnly began to wade in its viscid paint-like shallows. Possibly its unctuousness was pleasant to the ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... among which was one of eighty-three and a half carats, valued at 15,000l. In 1868 many enterprising colonists made their way up the Vaal River, and were successful in finding a good number of diamonds. The center of the river diggings on the Transvaal side was Klipdrift, and on the opposite side Pniel. In all there were fourteen river diggings. Du Toit's Pan and Bultfontein mines were discovered in 1870 at a distance of twenty-four miles from the river diggings. The diggers took possession ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... in an arm-chair and looked round the room. She recognised most of the things which she had known in his old diggings. Only one thing was new, a head and shoulders of Philip which Lawson had painted at the end of the preceding summer; it hung over the chimney-piece; Mildred looked at ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... in the early '60's at the diggings. I was a young chap then, hot-blooded and reckless, ready to turn my hand at anything; I got among bad companions, took to drink, had no luck with my claim, took to the bush, and in a word became what you would call over here a highway ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... have plenty of 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 ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... store where I was employed was located about three miles above Oro Fino city on Rhode's Creek, the richest placer diggings in the district. Sunday was a busy day for miners. Clothes had to be washed, picks sharpened, letters written to the "folks at home," and as often happened, "dust" sent to them also. This had to be carefully weighed on gold scales, a receipt given and the dust marked and placed in a buckskin ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... like Ship be gwaine to faace the fiery sunshine on furrin gawld diggings, I caan't answer. Here goes again: '1 sofa; 1 armchair; 4 fine chairs with green cloth seats; 1 bedstead; 2 cots; 1 cradle; feather beds and palliasses and bolster pillows to match; wash-stands and sets of crockery, mostly ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... her for the queerest bit of horseflesh going any way about these diggings. I thought she was mad at first, but I believe she knows ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... Sneezer will in a brief forenoon emancipate not only Europe and America, but the dweller beyond Jordan and the inhabitant of the diggings by Bendigo. Lay Chiavari in ashes, and you will no longer need Inspector D, nor ask aid from the head-office. Here is what the age especially worships, a remedy combining cheapness with efficiency. It may be said that we have no more right ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... coat, and pocketed hands proclaimed him a sailor, there were one or two contradictory points about him. A huge beard and moustache savoured more of the diggings than the deep, and a brown wide-awake with a prodigiously ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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. My fortune, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the sun was played out once more upon the ruins. Thebes, which, during the day, is almost animate by reason of the presence of the visitors and the gangs of fellahs who, singing the while, are busy at the diggings and the clearing away of the rubbish, has emptied itself little by little, while the blue shadows were mounting from the base of the monstrous sanctuaries. I watched the people moving in a long row, like a trail of ants, towards the western gate between the pylons of the ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... 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 ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... where the ore lay exposed to view, would be apt to secure the notice of the earlier miners, and become the site of their more ancient workings. Not until they were pretty nearly exhausted would the severer labour involved in the lower diggings be resorted to. The shallower but more capacious mine holes appear with greater frequency on the south and west sides of the Forest, where, too, they were nearer to the water carriage of the Severn and the Wye. ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... 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 was, and the object of my coming. He heard me through, ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... 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 tin pans, some with ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... the Australian gold-diggings one evening, I had in my mind's eye, all night, the numerous valleys, with their streams, all cut up with foul pits, from ten to one hundred feet deep, and half a dozen feet across, as close as they can be dug, and partly filled with water,—the locality ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... red-shirted, patriarchal-looking man, a man who had washed his first pan in the Californian diggings ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... showed Bartley about the diggings, quietly proud of his establishment, and enthusiastic about the unfailing supply of water—in fact, Scott talked more about water than he did about gold. Bartley realized that the big miner would have been a misfit in town, that he belonged in the rugged hills from which he wrested a scant ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... to 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 ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... and lazy Californians are crowded out of the diggings. The superior minds among the priests and rancheros can only explain the long ignorance of the gold deposits by the absolute brutishness of the hill tribes. Their knowledge of metals was absolutely nothing. Beyond flint-headed spears, their bows and arrows, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... "superior race" allowed him 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... 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 this ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... Baby are only 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 but jam for those ladies and gentlemen ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... this 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 ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... 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 Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... rum. There is also another phase of his character which should be mentioned. Whenever he saw animals abused, horses beaten, he instantly interfered, often at great risk of personal harm from the brutal drivers about the lime quarries and iron ore diggings. So firm, so determined was he, that the cruellest ruffian felt that he must yield or confront the law. Take him all for all, there will rarely be found in one man more universal benevolence and justice than was possessed by the subject of ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... at your diggings," he said. "I had to go through London. They told me you had started. ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... but unfortunately for them it was not so. The gold-fever had stricken everybody—merchants even, mechanics, clerks, all in fact but the few cool hands who realised that by remaining in the half-deserted towns they were sure of making that fortune the winning of which at the diggings was problematical; and one consequence of this was that when seamen deserted a ship no one could be found to take their places; and Captain Staunton could stand on his own poop and count at least fifty ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... he said cheerfully. "Of course Desire must make her own choice. But if she takes my tip she will stay where you've put her. It's a jolly room. As for me, I'm going up to my old diggings—thought I'd told you." ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... going to dig for gold," Prudence answered, as they started again. "Hugh says there is gold in the river-bed. The boys dig, and we sift the diggings in this cradle, which rocks in the water so that all the dirt runs out and the gold stays in—at least, it would if there were any to stay. Last year we dug for ever so long, but never got any gold at all. We found some ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... deplorable? I have lost one-half the pleasure there is in friendship, and, perhaps, you think, all there is in love. Yes, 'tis true: I am one of the superfluous sixty thousand women who are usurping the population in a small state. I had better go to the far West, and settle in the gold diggings, hadn't I? ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... These dry diggings were a revelation to the world. Men began to think the diamond perhaps was a commoner stone than any one had dreamed it ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... required that any member must have been resident in the district from which he came for not less than six months prior to his election and must be able to read and write; and, as cruel chance would have it, among the first prospectors to find their way into the new diggings in the preceding winter, who alone could comply with the required term of residence, not one could write his name. Had but one been able to do it ever so crudely—could one but have made a reasonable pretence of an ability to stumble through the opening paragraphs of the Constitution of the ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... where I had sought a shelter from the storm was composed of large old dilapidated-looking half-dead elders; perhaps their age was not above thirty or forty years, but they looked older than hawthorns of one or two centuries; and under them the rabbits had their diggings—huge old mounds and burrows that looked like a badger's earth. Here, too, the burrows had probably existed first and had attracted the wheatears, and the birds had brought the seed ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... treated him so badly that he ran away to sea. Poor fellow? he used sometimes to write to your father. Their mutual dislike to John Liddell was a kind of bond between them. It is an unhappy story, for, as I told you, he was afterward killed at the gold diggings. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... new diggings, Fred? I hadn't heard of any. But that is not surprising, as I don't hear news as I used to before the accident, when I could get ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... a trap laid by the latter, and while under a false 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 ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... cheerful aspect. Besides, the ancient tools that you mention as existing in such numbers down there are becoming so scarce as to be very valuable and well worth collecting. So, on the whole, I think we had better go and take a look at your prehistoric diggings this very day." ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... know my 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 at the ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... come 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, financial agent,' ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... were two or three small knots of passengers, chiefly ladies, unknown to the Gilmore group; but beside a derrick post, where we first saw Hugh on the Votaress, stood the three Hayles, old Joy, and "California"—bound once more for the gold-diggings. Near the Hayles, yet nearer the bell, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... a lank, ungainly youth, with a disagreeable complexion and a struggling moustache. He was a student at Guy's; he had 'diggings'; he tasted the joy of independence. As is the way with young men of turbid passions and indifferent breeding, he rapidly signalised his independence by plunging into sordid slavery. A miserable time to think of; a wilderness of riot, folly, and shame. Yet it ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... out at our diggings. Nobody liked him, or trusted him. He was too lazy to work, but just loafed around, complaining of his luck. One night I caught him in my tent, just going to rob me. I warned him to leave the camp next day or I'd report him, and the boys would have strung him up. That's ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Raymond. "By George, I'm glad to hear it! I hope he'll keep so, that's all. I am glad I left that fool. He'd not my notions at all. We split two days ago, and I made tracks for the old diggings; got down as far as Tarbury under a tarpaulin in a goods train—there's some sense in a goods train—and then lay close by a weir of the canal, and got aboard a barge after dark. Nothing breaks a scent like a barge. And it went the right way for my business too, ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... into the region, and the Government began granting leases on easy terms to operators. In 1823 one of these men arrived with soldiers, supplies, skilled miners, and one hundred and fifty slaves; and thereafter the "diggings" fast became a mecca for miners, smelters, speculators, merchants, gamblers, and get-rich-quick folk of every sort, who swarmed thither by thousands from every part of the United States, especially the South, and even from Europe. "Mushroom towns ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... 25th 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 ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... 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 like this." ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... and stole the Easter Islanders. Just before we took hold there, a gang of blackbirders from Peru went there and killed and took away many hundreds of them. They sold them to the guano diggings in the Chincha Islands. Only those escaped death or capture who hid in the dark caverns. Nearly all those taken away died soon. We then made contracts with some of those left, and took them to Tahiti to work. It is true they died, too, most of them, but some you can ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the mouth of the Endeavour River. There are abundant indications that larger and more substantial buildings will rapidly be substituted for the provisional structures of which Cooktown at present consists. The population is about 2,500. The Palmer River gold-diggings, and some recent discoveries of tin, which have attracted a large number of miners, are the chief sources of prosperity. A railway will shortly connect Cooktown with the gold-mines. A section of thirty-two ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... was the mine. The shafts, rude diggings, pierced the cliffs on both sides, like so many caves. The bottom between the cliffs was bisected by a rivulet ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... visit Colonel and 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 ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... be so cruel now, Miss Fanny," said Aby, with a leering look. "I tell you what it is, Mr. O'Dwyer, I must go down again to them diggings very early to-morrow, starting, say, ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... in this district and also enough cattle to kill, so that we could manage to subsist on these provisions. We had long since dispensed with tents, but the rains in the mountain regions of Pilgrim's Rest and the Sabi had compelled us to find the burghers shelter. At the alluvial diggings at Pilgrim's Rest we found a great quantity of galvanized iron plates and deals, which, when cut into smaller pieces, could be used for building. We found a convenient spot in the mountains between Pilgrim's ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... comfort in thinking, my dear, That things would be 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 ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... Brussels, but when we are away there is no place on earth so dear to us, for it is 'home.' But there!" he laughed, "I'm actually growing romantic. Ah! if we could only find Muriel! But we must to-morrow. Ta-ta! I shall go around to the club and sleep, for I haven't fixed on any diggings yet. Come in at ten to-morrow, and we will decide upon some plan. One thing is plainly certain; Elma must at once be got out of Russia. She's in deadly peril of ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... was this way. He heard that all the shepherds at the lower station had cut it to the diggings, ye see; so he thought he'd make a dart up to the Castlereagh and rig'late the place a bit. He'll ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... and chance having thrown in her way a mate of her father's, she determined to devote herself to that, being influenced in her decision by the old digger. This man, by name Archibald McIntosh, was a shrewd, hard-headed Scotchman, who had been in Ballarat when the diggings were in the height of their fame, and who knew all about the lie of the country and where the richest leads had been in the old days. He told Mrs Villiers that her father and himself had worked together on a lead then known as the Devil's Lead, which ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... snow. A wild northwester was blowing down from the mountains, one of those beautiful storms that wrap Denver in dry, furry snow, and make the city a loadstone to thousands of men in the mountains and on the plains. The brakemen out on their box-cars, the miners up in their diggings, the lonely homesteaders in the sand hills of Yucca and Kit Carson Counties, begin to think of Denver, muffled in snow, full of food and drink and good cheer, and to yearn for her with that admiration which makes her, more than other American ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... not lived there always. In the palmy days of work, before the firm smashed, they had aspired to what might properly be called diggings; and, moreover, had "digged" in respectable surroundings. It was the usual thing—the thing that is happening always, every hour of the day, in all the great cities of the world—starvation, through lack of employment. Civilization still shuts its eyes to everyday poverty. Who knows? ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... 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 ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... 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 ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... they sell to 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 ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... I wear on my watch-chain, steward? I could not afford it at that time, but I talked golden instead, California gold, nuggets and nuggets, oodles and oodles, from the diggings of forty-nine and fifty. That was literary. That was colour. Later, after my first voyage out of Boston I was financially able to buy a nugget. It was so much bait to which men rose like fishes. And like fishes they nibbled. These rings, also—bait. You never ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... 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 ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... the French Company became greatly alarmed at the prospect of losing the sum which the United States had agreed to pay for its rights and diggings, and it took steps to avert this total loss. The most natural means which occurred to it, the means which it adopted, was to incite a revolution in the State of Panama. To understand the affair truly, the reader must remember that Panama had ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... 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 on ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... goldfield there had been worked out for years, and the place was only a dusty little pastoral town in the scrubs. Gulgong was about the last of the great alluvial 'rushes' of the 'roaring days'—and dreary and dismal enough it looked when I was there. The expression 'on' came from being on the 'diggings' or goldfield—the workings or the goldfield was all underneath, of course, so we lived (or starved) ON ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... and work our way toward the center of the apartment, our attention is attracted by a coarse, brutal "tough," evidently just fresh in from the diggings; who, mounted on the summit of an empty whisky cask, is exhorting in rough language, and in the tones of a bellowing bull, to an audience of admiring miners assembled at his feet, which, by the way, are not of the most diminutive ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... not exactly; I was calling on some friends; but as you say, some of the profession live in the street, and now you mention it, I suppose I shall have to find some new diggings.' ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... [Place of 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[obs3]; fireside; hearth, hearth stone; chimney corner, inglenook, ingle side; harem, seraglio, zenana[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... diggings?' I suggests. I like to see a youngster with the spirit of adventure in him. It shows grit as ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... became evident as morning came, and soon they all retired in couples, and went to sleep in their clothes on a soft layer of straw and grass. There they slept peacefully in a row, and I retraced my steps to my diggings amidst a deafening barking of pariah dogs. At these gatherings every Shoka girl regularly meets with young men, and while she entertains the idea of selecting among them a suitable partner for life, she also does a considerable quantity of work with her spinning-wheel. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... lessee of Covent Garden Opera House. His companion was a man named Hull, an ex-publican from Lambeth. With these two chance companions we entered into a sort of partnership; for some months after reaching the diggings we all ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... public-house, not larger than the Two Mile Oak, [Footnote: A small public-house between Totnes and Newton.] that cleared 500 pounds in three months, so it was reported. Sydney, I hear, is as cheap to live in as London. As to the diggings, I cannot say much about them. I have seen many who have made money there, and many who have lost it again. It is generally spent as fast as it is got. I hope we shall send you some specimens of gold dust soon. Please ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... Billy had left his home in San Francisco to ship as ordinary seaman on board a whaler. But a rough life and stormy weather soon cured him of a love for the sea, and while his ship was lying at Nome City he escaped, intending to try his luck at the diggings. A report, however, had just reached Nome that tons of gold were lying only waiting to be picked up on the coast of Siberia, and the adventurous Billy, dazzled by dreams of wealth, determined to sink his small capital in the purchase of a boat in which to sail away to ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... 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 gold in ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... Preuss, "there came a sad blow to Zedlitz's hopes: Minister von Brenkenhof [deep in West-Preussen canal-diggings and expenditures] having suggested, That instead of getting Pensions, the Old Soldiers should be put to keeping School." Do but fancy it; poor old fellows, little versed in scholastics hitherto! "Friedrich, in his pinch, grasped at the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... law and revolt broke out afresh in an extensive way at New Rush, the principal diggings. The Diggers' Gazette made the following remarks ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... 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 of her adventures. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... Lake Baikal, and through the awful 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
... pretty much like camp life, I dare say, only a little rougher than ours. More like the gipsy diggings." ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... diggings are at the other end of the house, looking into the stable-yard. I like to be able to put my head out of window and order my horse—saves time and trouble. We keep the rooms at ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... might turn up, and here was an unexpected piece of good fortune ready to our hands. During our few days sojourn at Timaru we made another addition to our party in the person of a man named Fowler, whom, at his urgent request, we permitted to accompany us in our now proposed expedition to the gold diggings. ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... they pressed on, until, in the bright sunshine, the blue line of the Turtle Mountain lay like a lake on the western horizon. Here McCrae began paying more minute attention to the soil, examining the diggings around badger holes, watching out for clumps of "wolf willow," with always a keen eye for stones and low-lying alkali patches and the general topography of ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... grandest affair of student life, and the rounding off of it, would be in three parts, with various ceremonies in between, and would last from now until two or three in the morning. However, I told him what I had wanted; to give a surprise dinner at his diggings for the party from "Lorelei," with him to arrange details while I played guide, and to take the part of host for us at eight o'clock. Could he suggest any one who would look after the thing in his place? Van Rhonda or Douw, for instance? But van Rhonda and Douw, it seemed, were the ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... laughing; 'I supposed you didn't feed hogs in these diggings. I supposed you 'let ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... able to say that St. Paul's on a certain night struck thirteen, which it never did before. Andrew Gordon, the miser, drew a prize of twenty thousand pounds for the number 2001, which he dreamed of the night previous he bought the ticket. A shepherd was the discoverer of the Australian diggings, by having taken up a piece of what he considered quartz to throw at his dog called Goldy. Human history is full of such things; but, marvellous as they are, they are not more so than the ways by ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... secure 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
... horses in the towns of southern Alaska, because, you know, there is one narrow strip that runs a long way south, and there the weather is not severe. But the north is another matter entirely. The pay that you would have to offer in order to lure the men away from the gold-diggings would be enormous. No, it had to be a winter job, and in the Geography section—where I was last year—it took us all our time to estimate satisfactory ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... among the floes, and the sight of him so visibly near put into me such a shivering eagerness, that I was nothing else but a madman for the time, sending the kayak flying with venomous digs in quick-repeated spurts, and mixing with the diggings my crazy wavings, and with both the daft shoutings of 'Hallo! Hi! Bravo! I ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... on the third night a huge mass of earth collapsed revealing a very fine bas-relief, sculptured with a scene representing Ashur-bani-pal standing in his chariot. The news of the discovery was quickly carried to all parts of the neighbourhood, and as it was impossible to keep the diggings secret any longer, the work was continued openly and by day. The last-mentioned bas-relief was one of the series that lined the chamber, which was 50 feet long and 15 feet wide, and illustrated a royal lion hunt. [2] This series, that is ...
— The Babylonian Story of the Deluge - as Told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh • E. A. Wallis Budge
... the limited capabilities of 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 ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... each day, the 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
... but Dick sent him off to stable it somewhere at the other side of town to help throw trackers off the scent. He himself drove home by a very wide circuit indeed, threading his cautious way among the hills toward the gold-diggings, where he drove back and forward several times around the edges of the dump, in order that the saises might see the red dirt on the wheels afterward and believe, and ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... 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
... 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
... 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 and "pikes" from Missouri mingled with the scum of eastern cities and with broken-down business men and young college graduates seeking their fortune. Surveyors and geologists came of necessity, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... Water them not in Winter, but in 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 the future stem; this to be done yearly, as long as they continue ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... A.M.—motor-ambulanced up 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 ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... Cadman was not ordinarily a passenger boat: she was commissioned to carry two hundred and fifty sailors to the ships left helpless in Corio Bay and Hobson's Bay, deserted by their crews, who, in spite of official strategies, had fled to the diggings immediately after anchors ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... spitting in a meditative sort of a way, "you see, we a'n't none of your saft sort in these diggings. It takes a man to boss this deestrick. Howsumdever, ef you think you kin trust your hide in Flat Crick school-house I ha'n't got no 'bjection. But ef you git licked, don't come on us. Flat Crick don't pay no 'nsurance, you bet! Any other trustees? Wal, yes. But ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... diggings," asked Lorrimer, who had taken no hints about asking questions, "east or west?" He was ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... came West in 1850, and was running a little shipping store in 'Frisco. 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
... the funds, and Stephen's energy and ability marked him out as the heaven-sent manager. Stephen accepted the proposals, gave up his London business, and set to work with energy. Coal was found, it is said, 'though of too sulphureous a kind for use;' but deeper diggings would, no doubt, lay bare a superior seam. After a year or two, however, affairs began to look black; Sir John Webbe became cool and then fell out with his manager; and the result was that, about 1769, James Stephen found himself confined for debt ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... spotting such a 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 machines ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... lengthy dives into the interior valleys in the hearts of Napa and Lake Counties, travelled the coast for hundreds of miles on end, and are now in Eureka, on Humboldt Bay, which was discovered by accident by the gold- seekers, who were trying to find their way to and from the Trinity diggings. Even here, the white man's history preceded them, for dim tradition says that the Russians once anchored here and hunted sea-otter before the first Yankee trader rounded the Horn, or the first Rocky Mountain trapper thirsted across the "Great American Desert" and trickled down the snowy ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... of a balance-sheet) under the compelling spell of wizard Pinkerton. Dollars of mine were tacking off the shores of Mexico, in peril of the deep and the guarda-costas; 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 ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... a gloom descended on Bright's Cove which lasted through many months. Old Man Bright hunted out the squaw with whom he had first discovered the diggings, and set her up in an establishment with gay curtains, glass danglers and red doileys. Each month he paid for her provisions and sent to her a sum of money. In this manner, at least, the phantom road agent had furthered the ends ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... out at your diggings would be closed by this time. Why not let me take you down to the Palace, along with Jerry, have this suitcase safely locked up, and we can all lunch together and get ahead ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... The "Hinksey diggings," as they were humorously called, were taken up with an enthusiasm which burned so fiercely that it soon expended itself, and its last flickering embers were soon extinguished by the ironic chaff and banter to which these ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... there the long thoroughfare, so full of traffic by day, was utterly deserted. I retraced my steps slowly towards the corner of Harley Street, and was about to open the door of the house wherein I had "diggings" when I heard a light, hurried footstep behind me, and turning, confronted the figure of a slim woman of middle height wearing a golf cape, the hood of which had been thrown over her head in lieu ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... Gentle's farm under the shadow of Granite Ridge, and then on to Canadian (th' Canadian Lead of the roaring days), which had been saved from the usual fate by becoming a farming township. Here he roused and told the storekeeper. Then up the creek to Home Rule, dreariest of deserted diggings. ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... he 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 purpose except to fare forward until he came upon some haven for ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... after C.J. Peake, Esquire, M.L.A. After crossing this, we travelled over low rises with quartz, ironstone, and slate; the quartz predominating. Herrgott and Muller, who have both been long in the Victoria gold diggings, say that they have not seen any place that resembles those diggings so much as this does. The country seems as if it were covered with snow, from the quantity of quartz. At eleven miles passed a brackish water creek and salt lagoon; searched ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... About a dozen of us came out together. We had all been Texas Rangers, but when the war broke out we were out of a job. We none of us cared much for the Johnny Rebs, and still less for the Yanks, so we struck overland for the West, with the idea of hitting the California diggings. ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... scoffed. "What chance has a man to take care of himself when another man puts a rifle ball through his back? What chance had Bill Varney of the Twin Dry Diggings stage only three weeks ago? Varney is dead and the money he was carrying is gone, that's the chance he had! What chance has any man had for the last six months if he carried five hundred dollars ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... 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 ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Gully diggings, now known to fame by a far more euphonious title, that early in the fifties I spent my first Christmas in Australia. There were all sorts and conditions of men there, men from every nation and every class. Englishmen ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... pause the rapping recommenced. Kane was just securing the last strip of plaster and preserved a preoccupied silence. Then the door flew open abruptly and a figure appeared impatiently on the threshold. It was that of a miner recently returned from the gold diggings—so recently that he evidently had not had time to change his clothes at his adjacent hotel, and stood there in his high boots, duck trousers, and flannel shirt, over which his coat was slung like a hussar's ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... Engineer Tucker he now occupies a tin house with a wonderful mansard roof, from which he issues every afternoon for an aerial constitutional, giving us a fright occasionally with a flight over far a-sea, but always returning safely enough to his new diggings. ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... you what. All I know is that your 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 ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... another's 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 upon, though ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... in some anecdote from your very shady past. Pigs aren't the British public; and self-respect is self-respect the world over. Go out for a walk and try to catch some self-respect. And, I say, if the Nilghai comes up this evening can I show him your diggings?' ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... had made them all, to some extent, collectors, and, like wood-rats, they had gathered all kinds of odd specimens into their cabins, and now required me to examine them. They were themselves the oddest and most interesting specimens. One of them offered to show me around the old diggings, giving me fair warning before setting out that I might not like him, "because," said he, "people say I'm eccentric. I notice everything, and gather beetles and snakes and anything that's queer; and ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... 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 ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... by the name of Paul Kane that crossed west by the Athabasca Pass in 1846. In those days the Yellowhead Pass was little used. It came into most prominence after the Cariboo Diggings discoveries of gold. Parties came out going east as early as 1860 from the gold-mines. About that time Sir James Hector was examining all this country, and he named a lot of it, too. More than a hundred and fifty miners went west through this pass in '62 bound for the Cariboo ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough |
