United States or Malaysia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Pike's Peak gold excitement was then at its height, and everybody was rushing to the new gold diggings. I caught the gold-fever myself, and joined a party bound for the new town of Auraria, on Cherry Creek, afterwards called Denver, in honor of the then governor of Kansas.
But when they came upon the scene, and saw that in the case of most of them it would only be after weeks and months of severe and constant toil that they could be rich, they grew faint-hearted, lounged for a week or two on the diggings, and then started for home again; so that, for some time, there was a counter-current of grumbling and discontented men passing back to Sydney by the road.
Some over-enthusiastic fortune-seekers worked the diggings also on that day; but by general consent uninfluenced, it may be remarked, by religious considerations the miners repaired to their little town for amusement and relaxation. These little towns were almost all alike.
He rode away and soon put twenty miles between him and the diggings. He came to a little store that bought diamonds and sold groceries and tobacco. He haltered his horse to a hook, and went in. He offered a small diamond for sale. The master was out, and the assistant said there was a glut of these small stones, he did not care to give money for it. "Well, give me three dozen cigars."
And all the while so unequal is fortune when God so wills throughout the Southern Weald, from Hastings to Hind-head, every copse glared with charcoal-heaps, every glen was burrowed with iron diggings, every hammer-pond stamped and gurgled night and day, smelting and forging English iron, wherewith the Frenchmen might slay Englishmen.
"Yet there are many," rejoined Ned, "who travel just far enough into California to reach the diggings, where they remain till their fortunes are made, or till their hopes are disappointed, and then return to England and write a book, perchance, in which they speak as authoritatively as if they had swept the whole region, north and south, east and west.
I c'n stand them for a while; but in the end I'd get sick of the smell of 'em cooking." "Oh! I have plenty of good grub along," chuckled Obed. "I was on my way home at the time I glimpsed your fire; and bein' full o' wonder concernin' who could be around these diggings right now I crept up to spy on ye.
The diggings of Maryborough district, situated a hundred and fifty miles northwest of Melbourne, are famous, and give occupation to some eight thousand miners. Castlemaine, seventy-five miles north of the capital, has proved very profitable in its yield of gold.
On the hillside clung a few white tents and log cabins; but the main town itself, we later discovered, as well as the larger diggings, lay around the bend and upstream. We looked all around us for some path leading down to the river, but could find none; so perforce we had to continue on along the trail.
Since then the growth of the country has been sound, and, if a little slow, sure. It has been slow because the ideal of the people has always been a sound and a general well-being rather than a too-quick growth. "Slow and steady" is a good motto for a nation as well as an individual. The diggings The Government at Melbourne The sheep-runs The rabbits The delights of Sydney.
Word Of The Day