"Diggings" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... do not see what we can do in Sydney. I thought the diggings were not more than twenty miles from here, and I find they are more than a hundred miles from Melbourne,—which is, goodness knows, how ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... of it. The farmer took it to the nearest town, where experts declared it to be a twenty-one carat diamond, worth $2,500. Round the world the telegraph flashed this remarkable story, and the rush to South Africa began. That was in 1870. In May of that year there were about a hundred men at the diggings in the Vaal fields. Before the next month had closed there were seven hundred. By April of the following year five thousand men were digging frantically in the mud along ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... many 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 close-woven ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... from my thoughts than chaffing you," returned Westly, gently, "and if the mere mention of God's name is religion, then you may claim to be one of the most religious men at the diggings, for you are constantly praying Him to curse people. I have already answered your question, and can only repeat that I don't know where my friend Brixton has gone to. But let me ask, in turn, what has ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... told his story, how he had come to that neighborhood and "struck it rich," as he confided to Jack Wumble. He was very enthusiastic about the diggings back of his cabin, and in the end got Wumble to promise to join him in his hunt for gold ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... read it one might have thought Mr. William Gum had gone out under the most favourable auspices. He was in Australia; had gone up to seek his fortune at the gold-diggings, and was making money rapidly. In a short time he should refund with interest the little sum he had borrowed from Goldsworthy and Co., and which was really not taken with any ill intention, but was more an accident than anything else. After that, he should accumulate money on his own ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Victorian public to develop their own wonderful resources. When you take gold out of the ground there is less gold to win. When you grow golden grain or ruddy grapes this year you may expect as much and as good next year. My brother David went with the thousands to buy their fortunes at the diggings, but my brother John stuck to the Bank of South Australia. My brother-in-law's subscribers and his printers had gone off and left him woefully embarrassed. He went to Melbourne. My friend John Taylor left his sheep in the wilderness and came to Adelaide ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... received in England of fresh discoveries; these were in Victoria. The immediate consequence of the gold discoveries was disadvantageous to the colonies, as men of all trades and professions forsook their callings to repair to the "diggings," and the shepherds abandoned their flocks, so that hundreds of thousands of stock were lost, or perished. The ultimate effect upon British Australia was, however, most prosperous—several of the colonies of that vast region ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... 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
... 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 once get a man to believing in immortality, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... specimen of the government of Victoria, the sooner I am out of it the better for myself and family. Sir, I am horrified at what I witnessed, and I did not see the worst of it. I could not breathe the blood-tainted air of the diggings, and I have ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... baby 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 ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... in the direction of bachelor's diggings and work in London. He thrust them aside and bought what was supposed to be a very good and flourishing practice at Birmingham. Unfortunately Mrs. Grant took a violent dislike to Birmingham. Their house was gloomy and got on her nerves; the air, she said, was laden with smoke ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... and under the foundations of buildings, timbers are found of wrought beams and already black. Such were found in my time in those diggings at Castel Fiorentino. And these had been in that deep place before the sand carried by the Arno into the sea, then covering the plain, had heen raised to such a height; and before the plains of Casentino had been so ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... dominions who, believing in the buried wealth of Midian, had the perspicacity to note the advantages offered by its exploitation. For the world around the Viceroy pronounced itself decidedly against the project. My venerable friend, Linant Pasha, suggested a comparison with the abandoned diggings of the Upper Nile; forgetting that in at least half of Midian land, only the "tailings" have been washed: whereas in the Bishari country, and throughout the "Etbaye," between the meridians of Berenike and Sawakin, the very thinnest metallic fibrils have been ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... 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
... fellow; I shall be delighted to receive you in my diggings, and bring some of the poetry and charm of your lovely neighbourhood with you if you can, for this place is flat, and dull, and gray. But, by the by, I haven't told you I am likely to be removed very soon to a good, fat living, old ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... was from Alec Porter's ranch on the slopes toward the valley. Facing ahead he caught, faint and thin, the roar of the Crystal Star's stamp mill. Over to the right—the road would loop down toward it at the next turning—was Columbus, gutted and dying slowly among its abandoned diggings. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... of the 'diggings,' where the vast masses of rocks assumed curiously grotesque forms, the miners discovered a rude cave, where they at once established their headquarters. A tiny stream ran through the bottom of it, and with a little placing of the close bowlders, they speedily put it in the best condition ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... found him, 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 the Russian ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... such luxury, Albert," said the old man, as he gazed around the comfortably appointed apartment. "You ought to see my cabin at Murphy's diggings. I reckon your servant would turn up ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... recurring: wedding-days, birth-days, and all manner of festival occasions, worthy (as the old Romans would have said) to be noted up with chalk, happened in that family of love weekly—almost daily. They cultivated well the grateful soil of Heart, by a thousand little dressings and diggings; courting to it the warm sunshine of the skies, the zephyrs of pleasant recollections, and the genial dews of sympathy. And very wise were all those labours of delight; for their sons and their daughters grew up as the polished corners in the temple; moulded with delicate affections, their moral ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... trench, between which there was a wall fourteen feet higher, flanked by three bastions. Around this fortress nitre is found in great abundance. It is now collected by the Huancas (the inhabitants of the valley of Jauja), for making gunpowder. The diggings for nitre have almost obliterated the entrance to the cavity, and the fortress is already so much injured that possibly in another century scarcely a trace of the edifice will remain. Notwithstanding a search of several days, I did not succeed ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... in particular, such as the Welcome Nugget, 184 lbs. 9 oz.; the Welcome Stranger, a surface nugget, 190 lbs. after smelting; the Braidwood specimen nugget, 350 lbs., two-thirds gold; besides many other large masses of almost virgin gold which have been obtained from time to time in the alluvial diggings." ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... 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 find where McHenry lives half ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... a red-shirted, patriarchal-looking man, a man who had washed his first pan in the Californian diggings ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... 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 pattern imaginable. ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... ventilation's gusty, and in gobs the ceiling falls— Which with oral respiration disagrees— Though there comes a certain quantity of seepage from the walls, There are some I knew in diggings worse than these. ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... 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 small help; wrote to the War-Department: 'Send me ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... American prospectors pushed 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 sprang up ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... believe he was the son of a former 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 ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... 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 weather being so bitter, I let them do much as they ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Australia to dig gold in 1847. We drove an ox team into the interior with other prospectors doing the same until we came to diggings. The men would dig and then "cradle" the soil for the gold. This cradle was just like a baby's cradle only it had a sieve in the bottom. One man would have a very long handled dipper with which he would ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... could find only just enough small green bushes to boil our teakettle. We dug everywhere in the snow in search of wood, but found nothing except moss, and a few small cranberry bushes which would not burn. Tired with the long day's travel, and the fruitless diggings for wood, Dodd and I returned to camp, and threw ourselves down upon our bearskins to drink tea. Hardly had Dodd put his cup to his lips when I noticed that a curious, puzzled expression came over his face, as if he found something ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... early days of the following spring a party of miners on their way to new diggings passed along the Gulch, and straying through the deserted shanties found in one of them the body of Hiram Beeson, stretched upon a bunk, with a bullet hole through the heart. The ball had evidently ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... 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
... occurred to me that you did not 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; ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... 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 ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... there is an outstation of the Imperial Maritime Customs in charge of a seafaring man who was once a cockatoo farmer in South Australia, and drove the first team of bullocks to the Mount Brown diggings. He lives comfortably in a house-boat moored to the bank. He is one of the few Englishmen in China married in the English way, as distinct from the Chinese, to a Chinese girl. His wife is one of the ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... 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 ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... in the Strand, and then I thought I would look you up in your grimy old diggings. My word, we are going to have a storm, Herrick," as a flash of lightning lit up ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... which passed through the Carton hospital—and his graphic talk illumined for her. Then in the night arose the train of visions; the trenches—always the trenches; those hideous broken woods of the Somme front, where the blasted soil has sucked the best life-blood of England; those labyrinthine diggings and delvings in a tortured earth, made for the Huntings of Death—'Death that lays man at his length'—for panting pursuit, and breathless flight, and the last crashing horror of the bomb, in some hell-darkness at the ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said Mr. Yancy, taking his unhurried satisfaction of the other. Then with a final skilful kick he sent Mr. Blount sprawling. "Don't let me catch you around these diggings again, Dave Blount, or I swear to God I'll be the death ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... associates who had been working at an unprofitable spot, putting up a notice that their "valuable site" was for sale, as they were going elsewhere. A few Germans who had just arrived offered themselves as purchasers. The price asked was exorbitant, as the proprietors stated that the "diggings" returned a large amount of gold, and the following day was appointed for the Germans to come and see what could be produced in the course of a few hours' working. The sellers went during the night ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... exclaimed, gladly, when he was near enough to recognize him. "I heard you were in these diggings, and was sorry not to see you out at ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... Bullock-drivers get the same. Innkeepers are making fortunes. I know a 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 to give my love to my ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... day's work had erected a dam thirty feet high along the ledge of rock, and had cut a channel for the Yuba along the lower slopes of the valley. Of course, when the rain set in, as everybody knew, the dam would go, and the river diggings must be abandoned till the water subsided and a fresh dam was made; but there were two months before them yet, and every one hoped to be down to the bed-rock before the water interrupted ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... the French-leave-taking of all her crew, who, during the absence of the Captain, jumped overboard, and were quickly picked up and landed by the various boats about. This desertion of the ships by the sailors is an every-day occurrence; the diggings themselves, or the large amount they could obtain for the run home from another master, offer too many temptations. Consequently, our passengers had the amusement of hauling up from the hold their different goods ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... emerged into notice as a vital political factor, when the spread of the United States to the Pacific raised the question of rapid and secure communication between our two great seaboards. The Mexican War, the acquisition of California, the discovery of gold, and the mad rush to the diggings which followed, hastened, but by no means originated, the necessity for a settlement of the intricate problems involved, in which the United States, from its positions on the two seas, has the predominant interest. ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... gentlemen descend to tell us how we are to separate the "spiritual" gold which faintly streaks the huge mass of impure ore of fable, legend, and mysticism. Each man, it seems has his own particular spade and mattock in his "spiritual faculty"; so off with you to the diggings in these spiritual mines of Ophir. You will say, Why not stay at home, and be content at once, with the advocates of the absolute sufficiency of the internal oracle, listen to its responses exclusively? Ask these men—for ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... believed that golden pokers would soon become rather common, that the Betsy Jones from London to New Zealand, with myself on board as a passenger, dropped anchor in the bay of San Francisco, and master and man turned out for the diggings. It is my impression that not a soul remained on board but the surgeon, who was sick, and the negro cook, who wouldn't leave him; and the first man I met on the deck of the Go-Ahead steamer, which took as up to Sacramento, was our enterprising captain, clad in a canvas jacket and trousers, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... small valley near the railway; and mine host, a jovial Irish blade of the good old "Donnybrook Fair" variety, who came here in 1851, during the great rush to the gold fields, and, failing to make his fortune in the "diggings," wisely decided to send for his family and settle down quietly on a piece of land, in preference to returning to the "ould sod."He turns out to be a "bit av a sphort meself," and, after showing me a number of minor pets and favorites, such as game chickens, Brahma ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... there was cause for a celebration. Had not the little man in almost one stroke won the heart of the prettiest girl in The Corner, and also did he not probably have a working share in the richest of the diggings? ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... opinion, formed after mature deliberation and a sapient examination of some two or three shovelsful of dirt, that there was a satisfactory "color in that ar bank." Some hard work of about a week demonstrated that there were excellent diggings there, and then work was commenced upon it in good earnest. The cabin was built, Gentleman Dick's choice of location being unanimously approved; two or three trips were made across the "Range" to the nearest settlement for materials and provisions; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... expecting some other big bugs," speculated Billy in a whisper, keeping at the same time a wary eye on the nearest officer. "Looks as though this were going to be a red letter day around these diggings." ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... a nap on Pappy Jack's bed. Jack took the manipulator up to the diggings, put off a couple more shots, uncovered more flint and found another sunstone. It wasn't often that he found stones on two successive days. When he returned to the camp, Little Fuzzy was picking another land-prawn apart in front of the ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... nothing to do, no fight to be made, when you are as helpless as a child and have no sort of show, that the grit runs out of your boots. I have fought red-skins and Mexicans a score of times; I have been in a dozen shooting scrapes in saloons at the diggings; but I don't know that I ever felt so scared as I did just now. Ben, there is a jar of whisky in our outfit; we agreed we would not touch it unless one of us got hurt or ill, but I think a drop of medicine all round now wouldn't ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... and Egyptian Almeh, there was all over the East an outflowing of these children of art from one common primeval Indian stock. From one fraternity, in Italy, at the present day, those itinerant pests, the hand-organ players, proceed to the ends of the earth and to the gold-diggings thereof, and time will yet show that before all time, or in its early dawn, there were root-born Romany itinerants singing, piping, and dancing unto all the known world; yea, and into the unknown ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... of 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 Underground Railroad • William Still
... 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
... 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. ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... 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. ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... difficulties of transit subside under the surge of population toward the new State of Oregon, or to the gold-diggings on the head-waters of the South Fork of the Platte, an element must permeate Utah which would be fatal to the supremacy of the Church. That depends, as has been so often repeated, upon isolation. Already ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Gaff's wife was alive, and on being informed that she was, he told Haco that Gaff had had a brother in Australia who had been a very successful gold digger, but whose health had broken down owing to the severity of the work, and he had left the diggings and gone to Melbourne, where he died. Before his death this brother made a will, leaving the whole of his fortune to Stephen. The will stated that, in the event of Stephen being dead, or at sea on a long voyage, the money should be handed over unconditionally to his ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... where danger from Indian raids was apprehended, Savage's company and another party hailing from Illinois joined forces for mutual protection, and all proceeded thenceforward under Savage's direction. Accompanying this Illinois party was a woman going out to the diggings to join her husband, who was prospering, and had sent for her to come on. The two women thereafter keeping constantly together, Posey felt his responsibility so far lightened that he occasionally indulged himself in a "square" night's sleep, while Dora and her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... property. The former falls into 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 both as digger ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... cross-trees and cursed Van Diemen's Land as long as I could see it. Jonathan took ship for the States, but I went shepherding, and grew so lazy that if my stick dropped to the ground I wouldn't bend my back to pick it up. But when I heard of the diggings, I woke up, humped my swag, and ran away—I was always man enough for that— and I don't ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... diggings are large tents, generally square or oblong, and everything required by a digger can be obtained for money, from sugar-candy to potted anchovies; from East India pickles to Bass's pale ale; from ankle jack boots to a pair of stays; from a baby's cap to a cradle; and every apparatus ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Asiatic angels. Magnificently scowling ruffians in sheepskin coats. In fact, a movie staged for my benefit. I was afraid they would ring down the curtain before I had had enough. It had no meaning. When I got back to my diggings I tried to put down what I had just seen, and I swear there's more inspiration ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... hide—told me. Kilbuck said old Add-'em-up used to send his squaw out patrolling the beach after each storm, and she usually found patches of black or ruby sand which carried considerable gold. . . . It seems reasonable enough, Kayak, for it's the same with all placer diggings ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... "My diggings, as the British say," he declared with a wave of his hands. "I'll have you fixed up ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... That's how it started. I don't know how it would have finished if you hadn't taken a hand and said I was a friend of yours. That saved my face. I came to the strike because I thought there would be a chance of getting in on the ground floor in new diggings and I hated to be driven out of it by having to dance for a bully and a bully's crowd. I don't know that I would have danced. It's hard to weigh the odds when a gun has been fired at you, but I figured ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... had recently been a resident of New Jerusalem, on the north fork of the Little Stony, but had come to the newly discovered placers of Mammon Hill immediately before the "rush" by which the former place was depopulated. The discovery of the new diggings had occurred opportunely for Mr. Gilson, for it had only just before been intimated to him by a New Jerusalem vigilance committee that it would better his prospects in, and for, life to go somewhere; and the list of places to which he could safely go did not include any of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... solitary policeman here and 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
... 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 Yellowstone ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... that Legion, and as for Kaspar (a name by which we knew his brother Edmond, afterwards triumvir at Merv), he was sure to turn up. Mother Carey's chicken hovers near when the elements are at strife. He was immensely satisfied with his diggings, he said, liked the natives, and considered this a splendid chance for improving his Spanish. He was reading "Don Quixote" in the vernacular. In a sense, I looked upon his presence as a perfect godsend to ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... 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 ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... the mountain of gold. Many in every class, who are at ease in their circumstances, and would fain have things remain as they are, look with dislike on a state of things so new, and wish that the 'diggings' in California, and the gold region of Australia, had never been ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... making our camp at the new diggings, or in getting to work to hunt for gold. Being out for a syndicate, who naturally wanted something big in the way of a reef, we were precluded from the alluring search for alluvial, "specking," as ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... 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 them—not in ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... River diggings (also in North Queensland) one William Baker testified to his principles of temperance in the following, written on the back of his "miner's right," which was nailed to a strip ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... an effort] At the moment, sir, I haven't one. I've just left my diggings, and haven't ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "Then will my modest diggings do?" he suggested pleasantly. "I've taken a suite in the rue Vernet, just back of the Hotel Astoria, where we can be as private as you please, if you've ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... half the chance of being dropped on to that we used to do. The whole country was full of absconders and deserters, servants, shepherds, shopmen, soldiers, and sailors—all running away from their work, and making in a blind sort of way for the diggings, like a lot of caterpillars on ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... 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 in the nursery; and if ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... clapboards. Here also we were shown many specimens of gold, of a coarser grain than that found at Mormon Island. The next day we crossed the American River to its north side, and visited many small camps of men, in what were called the "dry diggings." Little pools of water stood in the beds of the streams, and these were used to wash the dirt; and there the gold was in every conceivable shape and size, some of the specimens weighing several ounces. Some of these "diggings" were extremely rich, but as a whole they were more precarious ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... three years he had kept up almost intact. He had put literature, and art, and the joys of the connoisseur between himself and the measureless human ill around him. It had spoilt his personal life, had interfered with his travels, his diggings, his friendships with foreign scholars. Well, then, as far as he could he would take no account of it, would shut it out, and rail at the men and the forces that made it. He barely looked at the newspapers; he never touched a book dealing with the war. It seemed to him a triumph of mind and intelligence ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... after leaving the camp they sighted the pitted shores of their own diggings. Sitting in the McMurdos' wagon they had speculated gayly on Low's surprise. Susan, on the seat beside Glen, had been joyously full of the anticipation of it, wondered what he would say, and then fell ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... savages, that they are to be hunted on the diggings, commanded, in Pellissier's African style, to come out of their holes, and summoned from their tents by these hounds of the executive? Is the garb of a digger a mark of inferiority? 'In sudore vultus lue vesceris panem'* is then an ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... Notwithstanding the danger of loving the praise of man more than the praise of God, and the mischiefs resulting from such preference, we should lose, on the whole, by eradicating the love of human praise. Witness the accounts of the atrocious outbreaks of depravity at the gold diggings, while society was yet unformed. Witness, wherever cease the ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... the dining-room 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
... I have never fully realised how great an ass a man can be. When I think that this morning I scurried through what might have been a decent breakfast, left my comfortable diggings, and was cooped up in a train for seven hours, that I am now driving in a pelting rain through, so far as I can see for the mist, what appears to be a howling wilderness, I ask myself if I am still in possession of my senses. I ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... lived alone he had never felt as if his art, or perhaps rather his method of giving himself to it, had any trait of effeminacy. It had seemed quite natural to him to be shut up in his own "diggings," isolated, with only a couple of devoted servants, and golden-haired Fan in the distance, being as natural as he was. It had never occurred to him that his life was ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... lakes and the peat-holes—the latter from twelve to twenty feet deep—formed extensive water-basins. Some of you will remember the turf diggings in the great bog in Ireland, as we passed through it on our way to Killarney. The peat was not dug out in trenches, but the entire surface of the land was skimmed off, just as workmen in the city dig away a hill. It was so in Holland; and you must understand that the bottom of these peat-beds ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... 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 that have made their ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... me no more than the valet. His smile was ugly, his scowl uglier still—especially when I made that remark about the hunting field. "Better have held your tongue, Lal, my boy," said I to myself; and resolving to hold it for the future, I went to my own diggings and heard no more of the Colmachers, father or son, for exactly twenty-one days. The morning of the twenty-second found me at the flat again. "Benny" Colmacher had returned, and remembered that he had paid me ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... you light a fire, the smoke will be seen miles off, and half the diggings will be down upon us. I have brought three ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Why, I've come to see you, of course, old fellow; what else should I have come for? I set off early this morning, and I thought I would give you a bit of a surprise. Are these your diggings?' ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... whether in 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 ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... 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
... rest of the old-timers, the men of Forty Mile and Circle City. At the time of the discovery, nearly all of them were over to the west at work in the old diggings or prospecting for new ones. As they said of themselves, they were the kind of men who are always caught out with forks when it rains soup. In the stampede that followed the news of Carmack's strike very few old miners took part. They were not there to take part. But the men who did go on the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... in New York two weeks from today, the 24th. Of course I shall go to my old diggings. Telephone me there, so that I can see you as soon as possible. I am looking forward to a real dinner, at a real restaurant, with the realest girl in the world opposite me the first day I strike New York, so get ready for me. I do hope you have been well and as cheerful as possible. ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... 28th of July, we came into water colored and of a lighter shade than any we had seen. The cause of this is said to be the immense amount of mud washed down from the gold-diggings through the Sacramento River; I can not say whether this is true or not. We hoped to get into San Francisco in time to dine the next day; but a calm dissipated all such anticipations, and we lay off and on by the Farallone Islands all the night of ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... the 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 to destroy Chiavari ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... very lively and animated, for each was working like a beaver, and the red shirts made gay little spots of colour. On the hillside clung a few white tents and log cabins; but the main town itself, we later discovered, as well as the larger diggings, lay around the bend ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... placer gold and rock "float" at our camp and made quite a clean-up that fall, returning to Sitka with a "gold-poke" sufficiently plethoric to start a stampede to the new diggings. Both placer and quartz locations were made and a brisk "camp" was built the next summer. This town was first called Harrisburg for one of the prospectors, and afterwards Juneau for the other. The great Treadwell gold ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... which occurred a short time since at Snakes' Hollow, on the western side of the Mississippi, not far from the town of Dubuque. A band of miscreants, with a view of obtaining possession of some valuable diggings (lead mines,) which were in the possession of a grocer who lived in that place, murdered him in the open day. The parties were well known, but they held together and would none of them give evidence. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... exactly what we should call 'diggings' in London, are they?" she said to the Princess, who stood by her side, delighted at the pleasure of her friend. "We often read of poor penny-a-liners in their garrets; but I don't think any penny-a-liner ever had such a garret as ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... at San Francisco from the gold district Captain Fulsom intends visiting the mine The first Alcalde and others examine the gold Parties made up for the diggings Newspaper reports The Government officers propose taking possession of the mine The Author and his friends decide to visit the Sacramento Valley A horse is bought Increase of the gold excitement Work-people strike work and prepare to move off Lawyers, storekeepers, and others follow ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... 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 cities, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... was a Frenchman, who had been in the Southwest at least since 1832, when he visited the Pima villages and Casa Grande. In 1862, while trapping, he was one of the discoverers of the La Paz gold diggings. The following year he was with the Peeples party that found gold on Rich Hill, in central Arizona. Thereafter he was an army scout. He died ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... 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 of these places. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... existence of precious gems at Newera Ellia may have been accidentally discovered in digging the numerous water-courses in the vicinity; there is, however, no doubt that at some former period the east end of the plain, called the "Vale of Rubies," constituted the royal "diggings." That the king of Kandy did not reside at Newera Ellia there is little wonder, as a monarch delighting in a temperature of 85 Fahrenheit would have regarded the climate of a mean temperature of 60 Fahrenheit as we ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... the mountain-side, and discovered the outcrop or edge of a great vein containing gold and also silver. It is no wonder that people rushed from the east and west to the wonderful new mines, for it was plain that these new "diggings" were not mere placers, but rich veins that many years of working might not exhaust. Every newcomer hoped to discover a vein; and within a year or two the district around the Comstock lode was full of deep shafts, many of them abandoned and half-hidden by low brush, but some of them yielding quantities ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... Parkson stared at his "diggings." "There's Heaps I want to talk about. I'll come part of the way at any rate to Battersea. Your Miss Heydinger, ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... bidding. Again, some slaves are bought with money, and others with praise. It matters not what the purchase-money is. The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and be bought for it. Again, it matters not what kind of work you are set on; some slaves are set to forced diggings, others to forced marches; some dig furrows, others field-works, and others graves. Some press the juice of reeds, and some the juice of vines, and some the blood of men. The fact of the captivity is the same whatever work we are set ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Lee. 'But I would be squatting on my diggings with a shot-gun under my arm. Al, here, can tell you a few things about Monte ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... careful washing to get rid of the must, which accumulates upon it. Some planters—the writer among the number—prefer for table use rice a year old to the new. The grain is superior to any other provisions in this respect. If a laborer in the gold diggings, or elsewhere, takes with him two days' or a week's provisions, in rice, and his wallet happens to get wet, he has only to open it to the sun and air, and he will find it soon dries, and is not at all injured for his purpose. ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... his claim to the property if I would relinquish my claim to Miss Murray's hand. The property and the hand thus set at liberty were both to be bestowed upon you, Mr. Brian Luttrell. Dino Vasari was then to retire to his monastery, and I to mine—that is, to my bachelor's diggings and my club—after annihilating time and space 'to make ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... this this morning, so must look sharp. Roland Stanley was away on a fishing expedition. We saw his daughter. She said her father would probably be home on Friday or Saturday, so we decided to lie in wait for him in diggings, and to call again on Monday. I had no idea his place was so far away from Montreal—six-and-a-quarter miles by rail including the Victoria Bridge, which puts a lot on to the fare, and a good two miles by road. His name was not in the Directory, ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... 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
... for the present," Arthur answered, in a low tone. "I had to see you. There are strangers continually watching our diggings, and making inquiries about Isobel. There are things happening which I cannot understand ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hillside of golden gravel, and extract its precious particles. The simple individual pan-washers are the first in the field, but it soon ceases to be profitable to this class of operators, and they soon move on in search of richer "diggings." The other means are employed on greater or less scales of magnitude, by combinations of men and capital. All the forms of gold-washing run into each other, indeed; and companies, sometimes consisting of only two ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... your diggings," asked Lorrimer, who had taken no hints about asking questions, "east or west?" He was a ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... friends came to my diggings in the evening and invited me to join their party then going to a theatre. They had reserved some seat but one of the party for whom a seat had been reserved was unavoidably detained and hence a vacant seat. The news of my brother's illness ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... into many classifications. The first and most important is into deep and shallow. In the former the pay-dirt is found deep, twenty feet or more beneath the surface; in the latter, near the surface. The shallow or surface diggings are chiefly found in the beds of ravines and gullies, in the bars of rivers, and in shallow flats; the deep diggings are in hills and deep flats. The pay-dirt is usually covered by layers of barren dirt, which is sometimes ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... Originally called Klipdrift, the town was the first founded by the diggers after the discovery in 1867 of diamonds along the valley of the Vaal, and it had for some years a large floating population. On the discovery of the "dry diggings" at Kimberley, the majority of the diggers removed thither. Barkly West remains, however, the centre of the alluvial diamonds industry. The diamonds of this district are noted for their purity and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... 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 fast ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... palaces of some of the most famous Assyrian Emperors, including the Biblical Shalmaneser and Esarhaddon, and obtained the colossi, bas reliefs, and other treasures of antiquity which formed the nucleus of the British Museum's unrivalled Assyrian collection. He also conducted diggings at Babylon and Niffer (Nippur). His work was continued by his assistant, Hormuzd Rassam, a native Christian of Mosul, near Nineveh. Rassam studied ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie |
