Pickaxe

“ It was imperative to hold fast to this devastated soil, to hang on it, to break it up with the pickaxe and, failing pickaxes, with the bayonet, with finger-nails, to live on top when one could not get below ground, to keep awake and watchful, to shoot, to kill, to die without accepting defeat. ”

“ With the aid of his pickaxe Dantès dug, between the upper rock and the one that supported it, a mine similar to those formed by pioneers when they wish to spare human labor, filled it with powder, then made a fuse, by pulling threads from his handkerchief and rolling them in the powder. ”

“ The only objects that he could distinguish were the forms of three men carrying a burthen between them. They laid it down under the trees; and for the space of about half an hour there was the busy sound of the pickaxe and the spade, the shovelfuls of earth cast forth, and the slow delving noise when the heavy foot pressed the edge into the ground. At the end of that time the burden was lifted up, deposited in the pit, and the earth piled in again. ”

“ By widening and flattening the head, it became a hatchet; and, by performing the same alteration in the pickaxe blade, it became an adze. I possess a singularly ingenious tool from Borneo, in which the head is movable, so as to be used as a hatchet or adze at pleasure.
In Demmin’s “Weapons of War” many such hammers and{256} axes are figured. One of them is very remarkable. It is an ancient war-hammer made of black stone, and is shaped exactly like a pickaxe, except that one end of the head is carved into a semblance of some animal’s head. ”

“ Then I brought them out all my store of tools, and gave every man a digging spade, a shovel, and a rake, for we had no harrows or ploughs; and to every [page 420] separate place a pickaxe, a crow, a broadaxe, and a saw; always appointing, that as often as any were broken, or worn out, they should be supplied, without grudging, out of the general stores that I left behind. ”

“ When near the surface, in soil requiring but little the use of the pickaxe, an excavation of 6 cubic yards in a day of 8 hours would be a fair task for a soldier, who in general is little accustomed to working with the pickaxe and shovel. ”

“ Grim Death, in skeleton form, who stood as counterbalance to Time on the other side of the arch, pickaxe in one hand, dart in the other, also maintained a stubborn silence, perhaps because offended, for though most people considered that he held a pickaxe for grave-digging purposes, there were others who insisted upon its being a cross-bow with which he was armed. ”

“ One of these the splitter seizes, and holding it adroitly on edge with his left hand, taps one side of it with a hammer like a small pickaxe, with its points flattened and sharpened, until he establishes a decided crack, which he follows up, and repeating this process, divides the clog into smooth slates, quite as rapidly as you could divide the leaves of any gigantic folio. When riven to a proper degree of thinness, the slates are laid alongside of a man who sits very commodiously upon a prostrate beam of wood, into the upper side of which a long flat-topped staple is fastened. ”

“ A battery will seldom be completed in less than 24 hours, when executed by inexperienced workmen; but by those inured to hard labour, and with proper reliefs, in about 10 hours. In light soil, that can be easily dug without the aid of a pickaxe, a man can, in 8 hours, load from 19 to 20 cubic yards of earth on barrows. If a pickaxe be required, 2 men will do the same quantity of work. A man can wheel 20 cubic yards of earth per day to a distance of 30 yards on level ground, or 20 yards on a ramp. Twenty cubic yards of earth will fill 500 wheelbarrows. ”

“ First, it may be a rock, which has to be blasted in order to loosen it. Second, it may be in the form of gray or red clay. Third, it occurs in round masses, sometimes no larger than peas, and sometimes an inch in diameter. In this form it can easily be loosened with a pickaxe, and shoveled into cars to be carried to the mill. ”

“ Asa seized the pickaxe, partly with a view of defending himself against the dog, and partly for the purpose of striking it down to see if he could hit the pots. He commenced driving the sharp point of it into the earth, passing round from one side of the pit to the other, till at last he hit a solid stone; and striking round for some distance they perceived the stone was large and flat. Bill and Jonathan made their shovels fly, and soon began to lay the surface of the stone bare. ”

“ I found that the blast had brought to view quite a large surface, on one side, of my saltpetre, whilst further to the southward appeared the iron ore in masses that I could pry out with my pickaxe. After having feasted my eyes long enough upon my treasure, I started down the mountain, smoothing the pathway wherever it was rough, and opening up a way for my team and sled to bring down the ore to the hermitage. ”

“ It required the joint efforts of the four, though Billy Walker’s aid was not contributed without expostulation against the uselessness of this part of the labor. In the end, however, what by great exertion on the part of each and by the employment of the pickaxes as levers and bits of rock as supports, the task was achieved, and the rope was got in position under the chest. ”

“ The rock was not at all difficult to work, yielding readily to the blows of the pickaxe and coming away in lumps the size of one’s fist, or even bigger, consequently it was not very long before, between them, they had excavated a cavity of considerable size. ”

“ I also made myself tongs and shovels, pickaxe, and crowbars, and as fast as one tool was made at my forge, such as a pair of tongs and a hammer, I had means to make others better and rapidly. In this week I saw treasures gather up about me fast, and, having finished my iron work, I set to, to arrange them into tools. In the first place, by means of cold chisels, I cut out from a large mass of soft stone, that seemed as if it would suit my purpose, a grindstone some two feet in diameter ”

“ The salt is hard and brittle, so that it splinters when struck with the sledge-hammer and pickaxe. The rock is never blasted with gunpowder, from fear of the roof falling in; and accidents of this kind sometimes happen in the present simple mode of excavation. ”

“ So he got a horn, shovel, and pickaxe, and went over to the Mount in the beginning of a dark winter’s evening, when he fell to work, and before morning had dug a pit twenty-two feet deep, and nearly as broad, covering it over with long sticks and straw. ”

“ At length the labourer came in sight, and was greeted with loud cheers from the crustaceous party, which were ironically echoed by the disciples of the carboniferous school, and a most significant “hear, hear,” proceeded from an active partisan of the latter class, when the first stroke of the pickaxe proclaimed the commencement of an operation upon which so much was known to depend for the interests of geology. ”

“ Once more the spade struck wood, but sound wood this time. The last foot of earth was soon taken out, and an oblong trap-door disclosed, with a rusty ring-bolt at one end.
I tugged at the ring-bolt without stopping to think; but the trap-door would not budge. Then I got out of the hole for a pickaxe that Delavoye had produced with the spade, and with one point of the pick through the ring I was able to get a little leverage. It was more difficult to insert the spade where the old timbers had started, while still keeping them apart, but this once done I could ply both implements together. ”

“ For their warres also they use Targets that are round and made of the barkes of trees, and a sword of wood and at their backes, but oftentimes they use for swords the horne of a Deere put through a peece of wood in forme of a Pickaxe. ”

“ With a slight curve in the road an apparent obstacle can be utilized as a bulwark. In fallen trees the removal of a few side branches develops revolving faculties. A pickaxe makes a whole wilderness plastic. ”

“ The Hammer. Six species. A shell of a singular form, resembling a pickaxe, found only in the Indian and Australian Seas; there are two species, the white and the black, both of which, when in fine preservation, are highly esteemed, but the white is more rare and valuable.
Shell sub-nacreous, irregular, rugged, sub-equivalve, inequilateral, generally auricled before and prolonged behind, so as to be in form like a hammer; summit entirely anterior; between them and the inferior auricle, an oblique cut or slope for the passage of the byssus; hinge linear, elongated, without teeth ”

“ In this opening I set to work, turning over such boulders as I could lift, and there were many that by aid of a handspike, cut from a sapling with my hatchet, I was able to remove and send bounding down the mountain side. I scratched into the side of [141] the mountain in this way till I had made quite a little excavation, but I was obliged to give it up and return home for my pickaxe, as I called my anchor-fluke, and with this instrument, and carrying my dinner with me, I attacked the mountain the next day and made more progress. ”

“ The former strikes them repeatedly with his bill, making a quick 'rat-tat-tat.' He attacks them either from the branch or twigs from which they hang, striking downwards, or clinging to the side of one and striking sideway-downwards, or even hanging at their tips, in which case he hammers up at them. Whilst hammering, or rather pick-axeing, he often bends his head very sharply from the body—almost at a right angle—towards the point at which his blow is aimed, and he then becomes, as it were, a natural, live pickaxe, of which his body is the handle and his head and beak the pick. ”

“ I have pointed out to him that I don't think this will be any use, as in deer-stalking I fancy you follow the stag at some distance, but he seems resolute about the pickaxe, and so, I suppose, I must let him have his way. The Bulgarian Count was deeply interested in the matter, and says that evidently the proper weapon to use is a species of quick-firing, repeating Hotchkiss, and that he has one now on its way through Edinburgh, the invention of a compatriot, that will fire 2700 two-ounce bullets in a minute and a-half. ”

“ They are extremely superstitious, always consulting omens, such as the direction in which a hare or jackall crosses the road; and even far more trivial circumstances will determine the fate of a dozen of people, and perhaps of an immense treasure. All worship the pickaxe, which is symbolical of their profession, and an oath sworn on it binds closer than on the Koran. The consecration of this weapon is a most elaborate ceremony, and takes place only under certain trees. They rise through various grades: the lowest are scouts ”

“ In the first case, the earth will be thrown by those who are on the outward edge of the ditch to the second row, and by them upon the parapet; for which reason the second row, to keep pace with the first, ought to be twice as numerous. The [Pg 129] workmen should never be placed nearer than 2 paces, or 4 feet, from each other; and two men with shovels should be preceded by one with a pickaxe. If more than usual expedition be required, one man with a wheel barrow, or basket, may be added to six or eight with shovels. ”

“ The pickaxes hardly made any impression on the rock, but its disaggregation was effected with really remarkable facility by means of the fulgurator.
A few grains of this explosive shattered the rocky mass and reduced it to almost impalpable powder that one’s breath could disperse as easily as vapor. The explosion produced an excavation measuring fully a cubic yard. ”

“ I think, Bertie, that when we have once investigated the place and settled on our plans, we had better send Dias and José down to Callao to get three or four kegs of powder and some boring tools, besides a supply of provisions. We should get on a lot faster with these than with only pickaxes. We shall want a couple of strong iron crowbars for lifting slabs of stone, and of course some fuse for the mines. ”

“ They therefore went out and examined it most carefully for about two miles. But everywhere it rose, uniform and upright, without any visible cavity. The rock-pigeons flying about its summit had their nests in holes drilled in the very crest, or upon the irregularly cut edge of the granite.
To attempt to make a sufficient excavation in such a massive wall even with pickaxe and powder was not to be thought of. It was vexatious enough. ”

“ But we have passed through much to fit us for this. Gunpowder has rent our very heart; pickaxes have cleaved and broken us, it seemed to us often without design or meaning, as we lay misshapen stones in the quarry ”

“ At the present day they are very glad to use white men’s picks and shovels when they want to dig in the gravel or clean out the ice from their houses. They, however, have mattocks and pickaxes 303 (síkla) of their own manufacture, which are still in use. These are always single-pointed and have a bone or ivory head, mounted like an adz head on a rather short haft. The haft, like those of the mauls and adzes already described, is never fitted into the head, but always applied to the under surface of the latter and held on by a lashing of thong.
Fig. 303.—Mattock of whale’s rib. ”

“ As the engineer had iron in a pure state, he chose the latter method, and heated the metal with powdered charcoal in a crucible made from refractory earth.
This steel, which was malleable hot and cold, he worked with the hammer. And Neb and Pencroff, skillfully directed, made axe-heads, which, heated red-hot and quickly plunged in cold water, took an excellent temper.
Other instruments, such as planes and hatchets, were rudely fashioned, and bands of steel were made into saws and chisels; and from the iron, mattocks, shovels, pickaxes, hammers, nails, etc., were manufactured. ”