United States or Greece ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Well, the church was chock-full. There never was such a congregation before. Lots of people had come to know Jim on the diggings, and more had heard of him as a straightgoing, good-looking digger, who was free with his money and pretty lucky. As for Jeanie, there was a report that she was the prettiest girl in Melbourne, and something of that sort, and so they all tried to get a look at her.

Johnny Chuck is pretty good at digging, but he simply isn't in the same class with Digger the Badger. No one is that I know of, unless it is Miner the Mole. I guess this is all I know about him, excepting that he is a great fighter. Once I saw him whip a dog almost twice his size. I never heard such hissing and snarling and growling. He wouldn't tell me anything about how he lives."

It was abundantly clear that the establishment of mining industries would mean a great increase of expense to the Government. It was equally clear that, as the law had been declared over and over again in the colony, unauthorized digging on Crown land constituted a trespass, for which the digger was legally responsible.

He had been a digger, like most of the farmers hereabout, and he told us how he was the first to find the gold at the great rush at Maryborough; how he saw the gold glistening in the gravel one day that he was out in the bush; how, for weeks, he lived quietly, but digging and gathering gold early and late, until, having made his little golden harvest, enough to buy and stock a farm, he went and gave information to the commissioner as to the find, and then what a rush of thousands of diggers there was to the ground! how streets sprang up, stores were opened, hotels were built, and at last Maryborough became the great place that it is the thriving centre of a large mining as well as agricultural district.

From what we could see and all we could learn, they are very considerably inferior to even the despised Digger Indians of California; inferior to all races of savages on our continent; inferior to even the Terra del Fuegans; inferior to the Hottentots, and actually inferior in some respects to the Kytches of Africa.

Half-a-dozen boxes of currants showed a respectable growth of mould; a like fate had come upon some flitches of bacon; and not a bag of flour but had developed a species of minute maggot. Rats had got at his coils of rope, one of which, sold in all good faith, had gone near causing the death of the digger who used it.

As he sank groaning into the arms of Morpheus, however, even a Digger Indian would have realized that for the next two weeks the master of the Narcissus would be unable to defend himself against an old lady armed with a slipper.

"On the contrary, he remembered it well," said La Mettrie, smiling. "The best physician is the greatest quack, or the most active grave- digger, if you prefer it." "Silence!" said the king. "Voltaire has the floor; he will tell us of the greatest offence he ever received. Give attention." "Alas! my heart is sad, sire; of all other pain, the pain of looking back into the past is the most bitter.

I used to pay the trappers liberally to get my snails for me, instructing them how to gather and how to transport them; and to divert all suspicion from my real objects, I pretended to be a gourmet, who used the snails solely for gastronomic purposes, whereby, Monsieur," said César Prévost, with a humorous smile, "I was unfortunate enough to inspire the hearty garçons with a supreme contempt for me, and they used to say I 'vas not bettaire zan one blarsted Digger Injun! Mon Dieu! what martyrs the votaries of Science have been, always!

"Easy, easy," cautioned Roger. "Don't go to cursing. That's mighty poor business." "Business! What do you mean by prodding my nag that way?" "He was standing right where the next hole is going," replied Roger, driving the digger into the ground. "Sorry, but you were in my way. Now I'm a busy man, Mister Whoever-you-are, and I haven't any time to waste arguing or quarreling with you.