United States or Kosovo ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But it was necessary to set an example of discipline, and he curbed his impatience. Besides, the moment of attack could not be far off, and the superior position of the gold-seekers compensated for the inequality of their numbers.
A few minutes later the gold-seekers were on the sleds of the friendly Eskimos, some of whom remembered Abe, and the weary and hungry adventures were being rushed toward the native village as fast as the dogs could run. It was a hunting party that had come upon our friends just in time. Little more remains to be told.
Very well, then, the desert is good fer nuthin' else but mineral wealth, and Providence made it so plagued hard ter git at so that everyone couldn't git rich at oncet." The boys had to laugh at this bit of philosophy, but as they went to bed they could not help thinking of the toll of lives the great barren stretches of the Colorado desert has exacted from gold-seekers.
The appeal at the end of his address is perhaps as instructive as anything Mr. Kruger has said. 'Stop and think what you are doing, he exclaimed, 'before you throw fresh fields open. Look at Johannesburg. See what a trouble and expense it is to us. We have enough gold and enough gold-seekers in the country already. For all you know there may be another Witwatersrand at your very feet.
It is true that a Greymouth storekeeper when asked "How's trade?" concisely pictured a temporary stagnation by gloomily remarking, "There ain't bin a fight for a week!" But an occasional bout of fisticuffs and a good deal of drinking and gambling, were about the worst sins of the gold-seekers.
So the flood of gold-seekers passing north into the Fraser River country, south again into Oregon and Washington, and across the great desert plains into Nevada and Idaho made new centers of lurid activity, such as Oro Fino, Florence, and Carson. Then it was that Walla Walla and Lewiston, outfitting points on the western side of the range, found place upon the maps of the land, such as they were.
"There is no harm in a fountain," said a Brown Pelican that had come sailing into Cuthbert Rookery with her wings sloped downward like a parachute. "It was the gold-seekers who filled the islands with the thunder of their guns and the smoke of burning huts." The children turned toward the Pelican among the mangrove trees, crowded with nests of egret and heron and rosy hornbill.
But when, one morning, halting at the outskirts of a struggling settlement, he found the entire party eagerly gathered around a passing stranger, who had taken from his saddle-bags a small buckskin pouch to show them a double handful of shining scales of metal, Clarence felt the first feverish and overmastering thrill of the gold-seekers.
That was the disturbing thought that had troubled the two boys all along; and now, when they began to realize how great was the flood of gold-seekers constantly pouring into the mining regions and how their keen eyes would be searching everywhere, their anxiety to get to their fathers as quickly as possible grew apace, until they were almost as eager to reach the mines as was Tim Perkins himself; and, by a constant urging of their pack-horses, managed to keep their places with Jud Smith and his company.
"We're doing well," observed Tim McCabe, when the raft with its load and party of gold-seekers reached the end of Lynx River, "but be the same token, we're drawing nigh the worst part of the voyage, and we'll be lucky if we git through the same without mishap." "What have we ahead?" asked Jeff.
Word Of The Day