"Prospector" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... completely filled with drift. On the withdrawal of the ice the streams were compelled to find their way, as best they could, over a fresh land surface, where we now find them flowing on the drift in young, narrow channels. But hundreds of feet below the ground the well driller and the prospector for coal and oil discover deep, wide, buried valleys cut in rock,—the channels of preglacial and interglacial streams. In places the ancient valleys were filled with drift to a depth of a hundred feet, and ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... then something needled at his mind, until he swung back. The man who had just passed was carrying a lunch basket, and was wearing the coveralls of one of the crop-prospector crews; but the expression on his ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... glue, and while it held things he would give much to forget, still it served him well. He had ridden past a tiny, partly caved-in dugout, months ago, where some wandering prospector had camped while he braved the barrenness of the bills and streams hereabout. Ward had dismounted and glanced into the cavelike hut. Now, after he had eaten a few mouthfuls of dinner, he rode straight over to that dugout ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... I suppose. He wasn't the sort who would care much for an archaeologist. He cared more for a prospector going off into the hills than he did for me. And I—I admit that I am impossible. Archaeology is ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... mates was the celebrated Charlie Durnan. "Reefing Charlie" was the name he was usually known by. He was a most active and occasionally a successful prospector. It was he, I fancy, who years afterwards discovered the Pigg's Peak Mine in Swaziland. Charlie's weakness was drink. He and I ate the mealie-meal porridge of poverty among the Blyde River terraces for a couple of months. During this time we never ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... nothing—or if they knew they wouldn't tell. That was the case with every man I talked to on our side of the river. But over across the Timanyoni, nearly opposite the mouth of the Gloria, there is a little creek coming in from the north, and on this creek I found a lone prospector—a queer old chap who hails from my neck of woods up ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... refer to any psychological unit. In common speech it has various and conflicting meanings. "Since you urge me", one may say, "I will do this, though much against my will." Let the dictionary define such words. What psychology should do with them is simply to take them as a mining prospector takes an outcropping of ore: as an indication that it may pay to ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... the Harpeth bend when I met him over in Boliver before I came to Sweetbriar. In fact, I had tried to come to look over the fields just to kill time when I nearly killed myself and fell down upon you. Do you suppose he could have sent the prospector?" Again Everett brought Uncle Tucker back to the uninteresting topic of what might lay under the fields, the top of which he was so ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... your mouth, you don't have to worry about sweating out your pile! Quit any time and there it all is after your little adventure, still waiting for you to come home to! Maybe they'll even want you to write a book! But me—my father wasn't a lucky g-prospector." ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... now little more than seventeen years ago that a prospector penetrated from the south into the neighborhood of this mountain, guessed its height with remarkable accuracy at twenty thousand feet, and, ignorant of any name that it already bore, placed upon it ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... He was so handicapped by illiteracy and by his trusting disposition that he would be an easy prey to sharpers. Grandmother begged him to stay among kindly, Christian people, where he was known; but there was no reasoning with him. He wanted to be a prospector. He thought a silver mine was waiting for him ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... changed the name to Dynamite. Jest natcherully blew up, did that camp. Nothin' left but a lot of tumbledown shacks an' a couple hundred shafts an' tunnels leadin' to nothin'. Reckon this P. Casey is a prospector, Sam. One of them half crazy old-timers, nosin' round tryin' to pick up lost leads. One of the 'riginal crowd that called the dump Hopeful, like enough. Desert Rat. Them fellers is born with hope an' it's the last ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... been living on salvage. The uniform the first officer was wearing was forty years old—and it was barely a month out of the original packing. On Terra, Conn had told his friends that his father was a prospector and let them interpret that as meaning an explorer for, say, uranium deposits. Rodney Maxwell found plenty of uranium, but he got it by taking apart the ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... as I am of the beauties of Georgia I am prouder still of her material and natural resources. We have a vast undeveloped empire within whose borders there awaits the prospector such potential treasure as would make the fabled wealth of Lydia's ancient king seem but a beggar's trifle, and the consuming ambition of my life is to see these resources developed to the fullest degree and then shall my imperial mother Georgia shine as the brightest star that ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... a soldier, in digging a well on the beach at Nome, saw in the sands thrown up that alluring yellow glint which has led so many men to fortune and so many to death. The story of his find came to the ears of an old prospector from Idaho, who, too ill to go inland, was stranded in the military station of Nome. Spade and pan were at once put to work and in twenty days the fortunate invalid found himself worth $3000 ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... he pictured that strange encounter between the dead and the living. Jimmy the prospector, having taken his secret with him to a region where silver is valueless, had sat within a few paces from where he stood with his fingers clenched upon the bag, and an awful disregard of the rights of the woman he had left behind in his frozen face. Seaforth could ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... dragged the timbers down from the White Mountains. Indeed a number of unused beams, both trunks of trees and squared, still lay around outside. From time to time, since the original operations, some locoed prospector comes projecting along and does a little work in hopes he may find something the other fellow had missed. So the passage was crazy with props and supports, new and old, placed to brace the ageing overhead ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... and death to them were the merest pastime for an army that had just completed the humiliation of a nation of the size and strength of Mexico. The Indians were swept aside, and the country was opened to the trapper, the prospector, the ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... while to the west of it are Panta (18,590 ft.) and Soiroccocha (18,197 ft.). On the shoulders of these mountains are unnamed glaciers and little valleys that have scarcely ever been seen except by some hardy prospector or inquisitive explorer. These valleys are to be reached only through passes where the traveler is likely to be waylaid by violent storms of hail and snow. During the rainy season a large part of Uilcapampa is absolutely impenetrable. ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... just where to reach either his old father or his young son with the news of his death. Somewhere up the eastern slope of the Sierras the old man would be leading, as he had long chosen to lead each summer, the lonely life of a prospector. The young man, two years out of Harvard, and but recently back from an extended European tour, was at some point on the North Atlantic coast, beginning the season's pursuit of happiness as ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... no one knows where, some armed with only a piece of salt pork, a little meal, and a prospecting pick; some mounted on mules, others on foot; old men and men half-crippled were among the number, but all bitten by the monomania which possesses every prospector. Now there are probably 2,000 men in the Perche district, and the number of prospects located must far exceed 1,000. Three miners from there with whom I was talking recently owned forty-seven mines among them, and while one acknowledged ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... started out alone with a prospector's outfit, and finally brought up here. I 've been here now, I guess, about ten years, and it's very likely that I 'll stay here all the rest of my life. I 've got a prospect hole over on the other side of that hill that may amount to something some ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... the two reached the little house in the lane a surprise awaited them. They found Mrs. Erldon in her husband's arms. He had returned unexpectedly, having, as a successful prospector for gold, done well enough to return home at once to ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... (Connor), Bismarck, North Dakota, 1926. OP. The skill of Lewis F. Crawford of the North Dakota Historical Society made this a richer autobiography than if Arnold had been unaided. He was squaw man, scout, trapper, soldier, deserter, prospector, and actor in other occupations as well as cowboy. He had a fierce sense of justice that extended to Indians. His outlook was wider than that of the average ranch hand. Badlands and Broncho Trails, Bismarck, 1922, is a slight book of simple narratives that catches the tune of the Badlands ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... curious enough to baffle every attempt at scientific induction. Thus the "habits" of the metal, so to speak, must be studied by experiment with patient labour, the most accomplished mineralogist may pass over rich alluvium without recognizing its presence, where the rude prospector of California and Australia will find an abundance of stream-gold. Evidently the proportion of "tailings" must carefully be laid down before companies are justified in undertaking the expensive operation of quartz-crushing. Hence M. Tiburce Morisot, a practical digger ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... suppose I differed much from other boys in my school days, was just as full of fun and mischief as any of them, but there was no real harm in me that I knew of. My father is a miner, a prospector, always on the lookout for, and locating, claims. Mother was always a hardworking little woman, and raised a large family. We had a neighbor who didn't like us, neither did he like my dog, which, just as any dog will, intruded on his premises ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... such surface gold as was obtainable—the Master's share came to L260—and then, laden with samples of ore, returned townward, with a view to selling their claims to mining capitalists, before starting out upon a second and more protracted journey. The fascination of the prospector's calling had gripped the Master strongly, and he gladly agreed to remain a member of the party. But, in the meantime, having reached the city, he had determined to pay a visit to Mr. Sandbrook's house, first, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... she was! Down at Lake Valley. I put up a few hundred for the prospector, and he gave me a bunch of stock. Before we'd got anything out of it, my brother-in-law died of the fever in Cuba. My sister was beside herself to get his body back to Colorado to bury him. Seemed foolish to me, but she's the only sister I got. It's expensive for dead folks ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... a poor man's country—wages fifteen dollars a day and plenty of work. Everybody had a chance. Anybody could stake a claim and gamble on his luck. Now the big corporations have slipped in and grabbed the best. It ain't a prospector's proposition any more. Instead of faro banks we've got savings banks. The wide-open dance hall has quit business in favor of moving pictures. And, as I said ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... in the daily press shocking stories of the ferocity of bears. What a pity that the truth of these stories cannot always be run to earth! Billy Le Heup, a prospector and guide of northern Ontario, once having occasion to call for his mail in a little backwoods settlement, opened a newspaper and was shocked to learn that a most harrowing affliction had befallen an old friend of his, by name—But I'm sorry I have forgotten it, so let us call ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... the futility of commanding a lot of things she could not eat, just for the fun of making a large bill. She was like the traditional prospector who struck it rich and, hastening to civilization, could think of nothing to order but "forty dollars' worth of pork ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... the four boys on a highway leading from Columbina to Derrickville. They had fallen in with an old oil prospector who knew Nick Ogilvie well, and this prospector had offered to take them over to Derrickville in his ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... more susceptible to the influence of horizon and the different prominent points. He attributed a gradual change in his feelings to the loneliness and the increasing wildness. Between Tuba and Flagstaff he had met Indians and an occasional prospector and teamster. Here he was alone, and though he felt some strange gladness, he could not help but see ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... enormous redwoods in the Mariposa groves and the prodigious scale of the scenery in the valley of the Yosemite and the snow-capped peaks of the sierras. At first there were few women, and the men led a wild, lawless existence in the mining camps. Hard upon the heels of the prospector followed the dram-shop, the gambling-hell, and the dance-hall. Every man carried his "Colt," and looked out for his own life and his "claim." Crime went unpunished or was taken in hand, when it got too rampant, by vigilance committees. In the diggings shaggy frontiersmen and ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... back into his chair. He said to the two bodyguards, stationed at the door, "Scotty, Rogers, go and make the arrangements to bring that damned prospector ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... called Baptiste, who had been a gold-miner in Mexico for many years, came to the mill, and he agreed with Humphrey that California was very rich in gold. He, too, went to work, and, being an excellent prospector, he was of great service in teaching the newcomers the principles of prospecting and mining for gold—principles not abstruse, yet not likely to suggest themselves at first thought to men entirely ignorant of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... started an hour ago. It's you an' me for the big work. Pretty soon you'll hear 'em shoutin' for their coffee—in bed, mind you, and them grown men. What d'ye know about boatin' on the water? I'm a cowman and a prospector, but I'm sure tenderfooted on water, an' they don't ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... retorts, and a dozen other appliances, would have scorned the idea of an analysis or anything approaching it. But in the annals of mining discovery, how often has the resources of a great mine been made known and available to human enterprise by the crude, simple apparatus of a travelling prospector, and how many hopeless and worthless "properties" have swallowed the contributions of a gullable public through the ornamental reports of the skilled and cultured proprietor of ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... pretty late in the season," said my friend, the prospector, "when I took a notion that I'd like to see what sort of a country lies north of the Umpqua River, in Oregon, and I struck into the mountains from Drain Station with my prospecting outfit and as much grub as I could pack upon ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... impulse, would in turn make her purchases. The interior of the store proved to be no different from the general country store anywhere. The proprietor was very busy and occupied and important and interested in selling a two-dollar bill of goods to a chance prospector, which was well, for this was the storekeeper's whole life, and he had in defence of his soul to make his occupations filling. Bob bought a ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... mind," he said coolly. "I found out that it was one thing to go down there as a skilled prospector might go to examine a mine that was to be valued according to his report of the indications, but that it was entirely another thing to go and play the spy in a poor devil's house in order to buy something he didn't know he was selling and ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... supper, when the daylight was gone, he explained that he was out of candles; so we sat in the dark, while he gave me a sketch of his life in a mixture of Spanish and English. He was born in Mexico, his father Irish, his mother Spanish. He had been a miner, rancher, prospector, hunter, etc., rambling always, and wearing his life away in mere waste; but now he was going to settle down. His past life, he said, was of "no account," but the future was promising. He was going to "make ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... of provisions, enough to last him three or four days at a pinch and in case of accidents; he filled his canteen; he spent half an hour with the grizzled old storekeeper, who in his time had been a prospector and who knew the country hereabouts as only an old prospector could know it. On a bit of wrapping-paper the old fellow sketched a trail map that indicated the start through the Pass, the general direction and the chief landmarks, ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... automobile with two Indians and a gentleman who had been a prospector in Alaska, the family who had danced overnight at the Dower House reappeared, and then Mrs. Teddy, very detached with a special hockey stick, and Miss Corner wheeling the perambulator. Then came further arrivals. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... not represent any good accomplishment, and have no right to be. They are monuments of fraud and ignorance—sins against science. The drifts and tunnels in the rocks may perhaps be regarded as the prayers of the prospector, offered for the wealth he so earnestly craves; but, like prayers of any kind not in harmony with nature, they are unanswered. But, after all, effort, however misapplied, is better than stagnation. Better toil blindly, beating every stone ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... "old timers " roam the foot-hills, prospecting, and working over the old claims; but "dust," "nuggets," and "pockets " still form the burden of conversation in the village barroom or the cross-roads saloon. Now and then a "strike " is made by some lucky - or perhaps it turns out, unlucky - prospector. This for a few days kindles anew the slumbering spark of "gold fever" that lingers in the veins of the people here, ever ready to kindle into a flame at every bit of exciting news, in the way of a lucky "find" near home, or new gold-fields in some distant land. These occasions never ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... a little fleet of canoes was sighted skimming down the river from that greater wilderness of the North, penetrated at that time only by the prospector, or a chance hunter; for the wealth of gold in those high valleys had not yet been more than hinted at, and the hint had not reached the ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan |
