Gold digger

“ He hastened immediately to Melbourne, and for a whole week had sought his family in vain. At length, on the preceding evening, he found them only in time to witness the last moments of his wife.
Sad as this history may appear, it is not so sad as many, many others; for often, instead of returning with gold, the digger is never heard of more.
In England many imagine that the principal labour at the diggings consists in stooping to pick up the lumps of gold which lie upon the ground at their feet, only waiting for some one to take possession of them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The three of us lunched together, and I found that Grayle, too, was bound for the gold-fields. Their methods of approach were notably different, for, while Guy [Pg 27] Bannerman informed New York City that any fool could dig for gold and I retorted that every fool would, Grayle was compiling an exhaustive list of everything that a gold-digger could need or be drugged into thinking he needed.
"One wants a pick and shovel, I suppose," Guy ventured, "and—and a pannikin." His conception of gold-digging impressed me as being literary. ”

“ In the latter, where the gold is nearly equally distributed among the earth, a certain amount of labour will produce a certain reward; while in the former, success may not attend the operations of the gold-digger. There is a remarkable peculiarity in the gold of all dry diggings, which is, that the formation of gold in every ravine is different, so much so that one acquainted with the character{90} of the gold in any certain region can easily tell by a glance at a piece of gold from what ravine it was extracted. ”

“ Gold-diggings had been recently discovered in New South Wales—in Port Philip, as Victoria was then called; and as many people from the colonies wished to return, for their accommodation, numbers of large ships were being “laid on” for Sydney and Melbourne.
There is no class of passenger so profitable as the gold-digger going away from a diggings; and this being a fact, well-known among the captains and owners of ships, there was no scarcity in the supply of vessels then fitting out in the harbours of California. ”

“ There is, perhaps, no occupation, in which men have finer opportunities of robbing their partners, than that of gold-digging. And yet I believe that instances of the kind—that is, of one mate robbing another—are very rare upon the gold fields. During my long experience in the diggings—both of California and Australia—I knew of but two such cases.
The man who brought me the nugget, taken from Tom’s tent, was, like the majority of gold-diggers, an honest person. ”

“ Tad fixed the weather-beaten face of the skipper with a questioning gaze.
“I don’t think I understand, sir.”
“I’ll tell you what I know about it some other time, lad. I haven’t the time to spin the yarn now. It’s a long one. I’ve been sailing up and down these waters, fair weather and foul, for a good many years, and I’ve seen a fair cargo of strange things in my time, but this Digger outfit is the most peculiar one I ever came across. They are a living example of what the lure of gold means when it gets into a man’s system. Gold is all right. ”

“ These diggers' weddings are all the rage, and bridal veils, white kid gloves, and, above all, orange blossoms are generally most difficult to procure at any price.
At times, you may see men, half-mad, throwing sovereigns, like halfpence, out of their pockets into the streets; and I once saw a digger, who was looking over a large quantity of bank-notes, deliberately tear to pieces and trample in the mud under his feet every soiled or ragged one he came to, swearing all the time at the gold-brokers for "giving him dirty paper money for pure Alexander gold; he wouldn't carry dirt in his pocket ”

“ With his wall-eyes dully gleaming ’neath the nightmare of his dreaming,
And the gaslight o’er him streaming, casts his shadow on the floor;
But my soul in that black shadow that lies heavy on the floor,
Shall be shrouded—Nevermore!
Punch, January 10, 1880.
The Gold Digger.
Once upon an evening dreary, a gold-digger, tired and weary,
Cogitated very sadly, brain and bone and heart were sore,
For no gold came by his toiling, unkind fate seemed ever foiling 54
All his toilsome, weary efforts, and the keeper of the store
Had pitilessly stopped his credit ”

“ Having so long been a miner, and acquainted with all his privations and sufferings; having experienced{vi} his elation at success and his depression at failure; having passed through the trying season of acclimation, and lain once beneath a lone oak, expecting, as he looked up to the stars shining clear above him, there to end his days; having rocked the gold-digger’s cradle, wielded his pick and spade, messed and slept with miners, he is prepared to present a correct view of his subject for those who have friends at the mines. ”

“ And the old man is too proud to take a fiver!” B.B. always had gold. He was still watching the children fading in the distance, when he struck his hands together. “I’ve got it! I’ll salt his claim. He’ll never find out its Bendigo gold. He doesn’t know the game.”
[A] A gold digger who works by himself.
There is an unwritten law, strictly observed among the diggers, that no man shall go down the shaft of another, without invitation; and to do so at night during the “rushes” was carrying one’s life in one’s hand ”

“ On the price of carriage up, depended of course the price of provisions at the diggings.
The weight of one of these "swags" is far from light; the provender for the road is itself by no means trifling, though that of course diminishes by the way, and lightens the load a little. Still there are the blankets, fire-arms, drinking and eating apparatus, clothing, chamois-leather for the gold that has yet to be dug, and numberless other cumbersome articles necessary for the digger. In every belt was stuck either a large knife or a tomahawk ”

“ But as yet, if they get only twelve and a half cents of gold from a pan of dirt, they do not think it is worth the trouble of getting it.
As a general rule, it is a practice among the miners to leave each digger a sufficient space for a hole, upon which nobody has a right to encroach; from four to ten feet they allow among themselves to be sufficient for each, according as they may be more or less numerous and as digging may be more or less rich. ”

“ A digger went to rescue it, and never was humanity more promptly rewarded, for from the sands by the rock he unearthed more than £1,000 worth of gold before nightfall. Some of the more fortunate prospectors had their footsteps dogged by watchful bands bent on sharing their good luck. ”

“ Whether there is any geological rule to be guided by has yet to be proved, at present no old digger will ever sink below the mica soil, or leave his hole until he arrives at it, even if he sinks to forty feet. So, therefore, it may be taken as a general rule, wherever the diggings may be, either in Victoria, New South Wales, or South Australia, that gold in "working" quantities lies only where there is found quartz or mica. ”

“ In most cases, it seems that the diggers themselves, through their actual experience, are better acquainted with the payable and non-payable ground than any stranger, however experienced otherwise, can be.
From 1873, the gold-laws of the Transvaal permitted a digger to take out a license for a claim on any gold-bearing property held to be the property of the government, and the digger paying the amount of this license for his right to dig for gold. ”

“ While the diamond excitement was still raging the people were inflamed at finding there was gold about them in great quantities. The diamond hunters in many instances became gold diggers, because there was even more money to be made in gold digging than in hunting for diamonds. ”

“ I was a young digger, being only thirteen years of age, but there were no schools on the diggings in those days, and all hands had to make themselves generally useful. My first attempt at digging was in the creek, opposite Captain Simpson’s store, where I managed to knock out half an ounce a day, but a rush breaking out at the back of where Watson’s store now stands, and at that time known as Lushington Hill, I left for that place. At the top part of the hill the claims were from 30 to 40 feet deep, and very rich. The gold was found in the pipe clay ”

“ A rise in the value of labour and a diminished production of the noble metal have, however, since led to the abandonment of a large number of the diggings that formerly were most productive; others now scarcely pay the expense of the working. Many of the gold-diggers who were formerly rich, in the attempt to win more have been impoverished, and have disappeared; others who have succeeded in retaining their "pood of gold"—that is the mint unit which the gold-diggers prefer to use in their conversation—have removed to Omsk, Krasnojarsk, Moscow, Petersburg, Paris, &c. ”

“ The first thing gold-diggers do when they arrive upon a newly-discovered gold-field is to look about them for a piece of ground which is most likely to be auriferous. Having made their selection, they measure as much of it as the gold-mining regulations of the colony allow them to occupy (perhaps forty feet by sixty) , stick a boundary wooden peg at each corner, and then drive their pick into the centre of their ground, which is called "claim." Then they reconnoitre, and set about putting up their tent, and building a chimney. ”

“ But the motions of every man are watched. Even when he gathers up his traps, takes formal leave, and is professedly bound home, he is tracked for leagues. No disguise can avail him; the most successful war-stratagem would fail here.
Friday, Oct. 27. I have just returned from another ravine, five miles distant, where there are eighty or a hundred gold-diggers. They are mostly Sonoranians, and, like all their countrymen, passionately devoted to gambling. They were playing at monté; the keeper of the bank was a woman, and herself a Sonoranian. ”

“ A majority of the men met with on the gold-fields of California and Australia, are universally, or at least generally, unlike those they have left behind them in the lands of their birth. Most gold-diggers are men of character, of some kind or other ”

“ You will find rough country that way. I should say you would have tough traveling all the way. If you can get the Gold Diggers to open up, they will undoubtedly be able to give you some useful information that would enable you to lay your course to the best advantage. ”

“ But little care the gold-diggers about the wolves, it is enough for them to know that this ravine contains gold; and it must be dug out, though an earthquake may slumber beneath. If you want to find men prepared to storm the burning threshold of the infernal prison, go among gold-diggers.
The provisions with which we left San José are gone, and we have been obliged to supply ourselves here. We pay at the rate of four hundred dollars a barrel for flour; four dollars a pound for poor brown sugar, and four dollars a pound for indifferent coffee. ”

“ He would have been able to have worked through the bad layer though if he had saved the money he made first, instead of throwing it away playing faro in those gambling saloons that were so fatal to many a digger’s fortunes.
After he sold his claim in the mine he lived the roving hand-to-mouth life of a river-digger, with very little capital beyond his pick and shovel, and his reputation with the store-keepers of being a straight man, who would always pay when he found. Not a bad life either he would think at any other time, for the Bohemianism of a digger is ingrained in him. ”

“ They often bring their families with them. I saw one family, the father of which, assisted by the older children, was “panning out” gold on a stream near his rude home made of hides. The mother was washing clothes, while the infant was swinging in a basket made fast to the branches overhead. An interesting girl of five years, with a tiny pick and spade, was digging in a hole, already sunk two feet, and putting the dirt in a pan, which she would take to the stream and wash, putting the scale or two of gold into a dipper a little larger than a thimble. A heavy rain drove us home, wet and cold. ”

“ In the days when gold-digging was romantic and fashionable, I have seen learned lawyers, skilled physicians, and eloquent divines—who had been seduced by the charms of a miner’s life—passing the Sabbath day at the washtub, or seated outside their tents, needle in hand, stitching the torn seams of their ragged and scanty clothing. I had myself been following this rude manner of life, ever since my arrival at the diggings; but it had now lost its charms, and after reaching the Tuolumne, I took up my residence in a French boarding-house. ”

“ As soon as sufficient earth was ready, one began to rock, and another to fill the hopper with water. Richard continued puddling, William, enacted Aquarius for him, whilst a fifth was fully occupied in conveying fresh dirt to the tubs, and taking the puddled stuff from them to the hopper of the cradle. Every now and then a change of hands was made, and thus passed the day. In the evening, the products were found to be one small nugget weighing a quarter of an ounce, and in gold-dust eight pennyweights, ten grains, being worth, at the digging price for gold, about thirty-five shillings. ”