Digger

“ The cradle is set up, the water poured over, and the monotony of the digger's life begins, a sort of voluntary treadmill occupation, until homesick and tired, even if successful, he ties up his wallet which contains his wealth, secretes it about his body, and tramps off. ”

“ The digger returned the nugget to his pocket. “I call you a dam’ amusin’ cuss, I do that. You’re a goer. There ain’t no keepin’ up with the likes o’ you. You shall make what you blame well please—we’ll talk about it by-and-by. But for the present, where’s the best pub?”
“The Lucky Digger,” said Jake, without hesitation.
“Certainly,” reiterated Tresco. “You’ll pass it on your way to the Bank.”
“Well, so-long,” said the digger. “See you later.” And, shouldering his swag, he held out his horny hand.
“I reckon,” said the goldsmith. “Eight o’clock this evening. So-long.” And the digger went out. ”

“ When nothing more could be seen in the crevices, which had been scrutinised twice and thrice, and we had dredged the pool’s bed as far as wading men could reach, I called off the workers, who were falling sick of the damp and chill; and two days later we left silent and solitary the violated shrine of the God of Dicte. The digger’s life is a surfeit of surprises, but his imagination has seldom been provoked so sharply as in that dim chasm. One seemed to come very near indeed to men who lived before history. ”

“ And although rough in their manners, and not over select in their address, the digger seldom wilfully injures a woman; in fact, a regular Vandemonian will, in his way, play the gallant with as great a zest as a fashionable about town—at any rate, with more sincerity of heart. ”

“ The feeble-bodied digger was nowhere in the race for wealth, and many a solitary sickly one dropped out of existence unknown to any of his friends, and not even missed in the ever-varying excitements of the times. ”

“ There were some doubtful characters among the diggers, but they were as a general rule a fine stamp of men, slow to form friendship, but this once made, was loyally given and maintained when fortune smiled, and not withheld when she frowned, on one or other. The digger of the past was not often known to desert or turn down the man or woman to whom he once gave his friendship. ”

“ A DIGGER'S CHRISTMAS It was on the Tinpot 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 and Italians, Russians and Portuguese, Persians, Chinamen, and negroes, sons of peers and London pickpockets, all rubbed shoulders on the Tinpot Gully diggings. ”

“ A Digger girl belonged to my church at Santa Rosa, and was a gentle, kind-hearted, grateful creature. She was a domestic in the family of Colonel H—. In that pleasant Christian household she developed into a pretty fair specimen of brunette young womanhood, but to the last she had an aversion to wearing shoes.
The Digger seems to be doomed. Civilization kills him; and if he sticks to his savagery, he will go down before the bullets, whisky, and vices of his white fellow-sinners.
The California Mad-House. ”

“ When it is dug up, it groans and shrieks so dreadfully that the digger will surely die. One must, therefore, before sunrise on a Friday, having first stopped one’s ears with wax or cotton-wool, take with him an entirely black dog without a white hair on him, make the sign of the cross three times over the alraun, and dig about it till the root holds only by thin fibres. ”

“ I was much better off, too, at the diggings than I had been in California, for I was now one of the ruling faction; and, though things were bad enough in some respects, people were generally civilised and humane, compared to gold-diggers I had met on the other side of the globe. My luck, however, was much the same. All I could do was to keep body and soul together, till at last I had to come to the conclusion that I was not cut out for a gold-digger. On my way up to the diggings, I had rested at a station owned by an old gentleman, who seemed to take an interest in me. ”

“ Digger the Badger sat on his doorstep. He has very few friends, for he is grumpy and very apt to be out of sorts. Besides, most of the little Meadow people are afraid of him. But Jimmy Skunk isn't afraid of any one but Farmer Brown's boy, and not even of him unless he has his terrible gun. So he walked right up to the doorstep where Digger the Badger was sitting. ”

“ Digger the Badger is just as much a cousin of yours as is Shadow the Weasel. You are members of the same order and it is a rather large order. It is called the Car-niv-o-ra, which means 'flesh-eating.' You are a member of the Marten or Weasel family, and that family is called the 'Mus-tel-i-dae.' Digger the Badger is also a member of that family. That means that you two are cousins. You and Digger and Glutton the Wolverine belong to the stout-bodied branch of the family. Billy Mink, Little Joe Otter, Shadow the Weasel, Pekan the Fisher and Spite the Marten belong to its slim-bodied branch. ”

“ Even the wily Digger Indian, with all his craft and experience, is unable to arrive at any thing like an unerring selection, while in a large bag full, that we took from the bark of our log, there was not one containing the slightest germ of decay. ”

“ Hardships such as these are often the daily routine of a digger's life; yet, strange to say, far from depressing the spirits or weakening the frame, they appear in most cases to give strength and energy to both. ”

“ He hunts it, therefore, with the greatest assiduity; and the chase of this insignificant animal is to the Digger, what the hunt of the stag, the elephant, or the wild boar, is to hunters of a more pretentious ambition.
336With his bow and arrows he frequently succeeds in killing a single hare; but this is not always so easy,—since the sage-hare, like all of its kind, is shy, swift, and cunning. Its color, closely resembling the hue of the artemisia foliage, is a considerable protection to it ”

“ This totally inapplicable system in a manner compelled the early single adventurers to abandon their claims, as soon as the surface-water began to accumulate in their little open pits or shallow levels, beyond the control of a single bucket, or other such primitive contrivance for bailing. Even the more active and industrious digger soon found his own difficulties to accumulate just in proportion to his own superior measure of activity ”

“ The Digger community then all turn out—men, women, and children—and deploy themselves into a wide circle, enclosing as large a tract as their numbers will permit. Each individual is armed with a stick, with which he beats the sage-bushes, and makes other violent demonstrations: the object being to frighten the grasshoppers, and cause them to move inward towards the pit that has been dug. The insects, thus beset, move as directed,—gradually approaching the centre,—while the “beaters” follow in a circle constantly lessening in circumference. ”

“ There are very few women at the first opening of new diggings, the life is too rough and rude; and some of those who do come, rock the cradle—but not the household one—with the men. The diggers, however genteel the life they may have led before, soon acquire a dirty, rough, unshaven look. Their coarse clothes are all of a colour, being that of the clay and gravel in which they work, and the mud with which they become covered when digging. ”

“ When bent on such purposes, these Diggers for a time threw aside their solitary habits,—assembling in large bands of several hundred each, and following the caravan travellers, like wolves upon the track of a gang of buffaloes. They never made their attacks upon the main body, or when the white men were in any considerable force. ”

“ His legs are so short and he is so stout and heavy that he is slow and rather clumsy, but he makes up for that by his ability to dig. He doesn't expect to catch any one on the surface, unless he happens to surprise a Meadow Mouse within jumping distance. He goes hunting for the holes of Ground Squirrels and other burrowers, and when he finds one promptly digs. He eats Grasshoppers, Beetles and small Snakes, as well as such small animals as he catches. It was well for you, Peter, that you jumped when you did, for I suspect that Digger would have enjoyed a Rabbit dinner. ”

“ Are diggers dogs or 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? ”

“ It is obvious, therefore, that such a population called for a good system of government, and for a most prudent administration; for, even if the police force had been at all analogous to such a body at home, the objectionable system of the daily or hourly visit to the digger, uncongenial as it was to the feelings of the free man, might yet have been administered in such a way as to produce little more than what is felt at paying taxes everywhere. ”

“ At night the animals were securely hobbled, and a horse-guard posted round them—a service of great danger, as the stealthy cat-like Diggers are often known to steal up silently, under cover of the darkness, towards the sentinel, shoot him with their arrows, and approaching the animals, cut the hobbles and drive them away unseen. ”

“ It will be a wonder if this unusual move on their part doesn’t attract attention. You may believe they are watched. There are, no doubt, those who are watching the Diggers, and who do not miss any of their movements. ”

“ In the same house is an heiress named Kitty Sprightly (a ward of Sir Gilbert Pumpkin) , also stage-struck. Diggery's favorite character is "Alexander the Great," the son of "Almon." One day, playing Romeo and Juliet, he turns the oven into the balcony, but, being rung for, the girl acting "Juliet" is nearly roasted alive. (See DIGGORY.) —J. Jackman, All the World's a Stage.
Digges (Miss Maria) , a friend of Lady Penfeather; a visitor at the Spa.—Sir W. Scott, St. Ronan's Well (time, George III.) .
Diggon [Davie] , a shepherd in the Shephearde's Calendar, by Spenser. ”

“ Gold commissioners, bankers, squatters, swells, come to see the rush; burly diggers just as they had left their work, shanty-keepers, bullies, loafers, and niggers, all pierced with cold and impelled by hunger, that great leveller of distinctions, jostled and pressed eagerly to satisfy the cravings of their appetites. ”

“ When we arrived at Campbell’s Creek, the flat now known as Preshaw’s Flat was a beautiful green sward. We had not been there many days before a party of diggers put down a shaft in front of our tent. They bottomed at a depth of about 40 ft., and although they got gold, still not in any quantity. The very fact of gold being obtained, however, caused a rush, and before a week passed fully 1000 men were on the ground. Although living so near, none of us pegged out a claim till late in the day, and had to content ourselves with a hole down by the side of the creek. ”

“ The doors of Mr Diggs' tommy-shop opened. The rush was like the advance into the pit of a theatre when the drama existed; pushing, squeezing, fighting, tearing, shrieking. On a high seat, guarded by rails from all contact, sate Mr Diggs senior, with a bland smile on his sanctified countenance, a pen behind his ear, and recommending his constrained customers in honeyed tones to be patient and orderly. Behind the substantial counter which was an impregnable fortification, was his popular son, Master Joseph ”

“ Needless to say, Diggeldy Dan was the clown, while Lion—wearing an old silk hat that Seal sometimes juggled in the real circus, and armed with a whip that Puma had brought from the great tent beyond—played ringmaster. ”

“ Here the female, unless discovered and removed, forms a sac which expands to the size of a small pea, and which contains hundreds of little jiggers who soon begin to “jig” for themselves, and burrow again in the same flesh. Many of them however are scattered on the ground; those that remain keep multiplying, until if neglected the whole foot becomes a festering sore.
To the African child the jigger is the occasion of its worst suffering. I have seen children who could not walk, some with toes eaten away, and several with nearly the whole foot gone. ”

“ Now listen to me with both your funny white ears and with all your two twinkling eyes. For this is the message from Too-Bo-Tan, to all the animals of Spangleland: Beginning on the morrow and on every day ever after, there is to come a wee little hour in the twilight when all the monkeys, and lions, and tigers, and things are to be let out of their cages, allowed to dance and to play and do as they will.”
“But, oh, Pretty Lady, that will not do at all,” burst in Diggeldy Dan. “Their cages are locked, there’s no hour to spare, and—and maybe they’d eat folks up!” ”

“ When engaged in digging, which is principally performed by the males, they are sometimes so intent on their work as to admit of being taken by hand, and the same may also be done during incubation. At this period I have frequently obtained specimens, by thrusting my arm into the burrow, though at the risk of receiving a severe bite from the powerful and sharp edged bill of the old bird. ”

“ The very next month, Dig's father gave up the notion of making him into a gentleman,—for the bobbin-net speculation waned,—and there was an end to making an immense fortune in a twinkling. He embarked the little capital he had gained in the more staple manufacture of the town, took Diggory into the trade, and associating with plain, sensible men, and cultivating knowledge in his leisure hours, Diggory Lawson was happier every day, and was no longer "the lad who felt like a fish out of water." ”