United States or Bahrain ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He had crossed the plains in the Fifties from the inhospitable State of Maine, sought fortune in the gold diggings with moderate success, avoided San Francisco with a farmer's dread of "sharpers," and drifting to the hamlet at the head of Rosewater Creek had opened a small store for general merchandise.
We see thee no more!" The Chinese have also the "peaceful land in the west," lying far beyond the visible universe. Farther up the river, we passed some abandoned diggings, where little colonies of patient, toilsome Chinamen had established themselves, and were washing and sifting the earth discarded by previous miners; making, we were told, on the average, two or three cents to the pan.
For the first time there was a breach in the Squire's defences, which for 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.
It had been the custom for the gold-seekers to take a lunch with them to the diggings. This saved time, and their real meal was eaten in the evening after their return home.
After a little useless digging among the clay, they reached the solid rock, and thus having fairly "bottomed," the holes to no purpose, they abandoned them. Although impossible at the diggings to keep this day with those outward observances which are customary in civilized life, we attempted to make as much difference as possible between the day of rest and that of work.
We saw much of this on the Lindis diggings. They were not a general success at that time, as we soon discovered to our cost; and many who went there wildly hoping to find gold for the picking up, and with no means to withstand a reverse, were only too glad to work for those who had means to carry on for a while, for their food only.
These masses were all excavated from one part of the diggings, known as Canadian Gully, and were taken out of a bed of quartz, at the depths of from fifty to sixty-five feet below the surface. The deep indentures of the nuggets were filled with the quartz.
But I learnt at the diggings as it were not right to run off as I did, for the Lord sent us a faithful preacher, and he showed me my duty; and I came back with my mind made up to tell them as owned me how God had dealt with me and changed my heart. But I couldn't find nor hear anything about 'em at the old place. They'd flitted, and nobody could tell me where.
At that period and in those diggings Judge Lynch in other words, off-hand and speedy "justice" by the community of miners was the order of the day, and, as stealing had become exasperatingly common, the penalty appointed was death, the judges being, in most cases, the prompt executioners.
He can sit down and steer with the current, as he is going down the stream all the way. It is for this reason that in returning from the diggings he should take another route, of which he will get full particulars before leaving Dawson; therefore I do not take the time to give a full description of the return trip via the Yukon to St. Michael.
Word Of The Day