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Updated: June 26, 2025
"Suits me okay, buddy; suppose you trot it out and we'll pas the time away bolstering up our strength no telling what we may have before us tonight if we happen to strike rich pay-dirt."
The pay-dirt was all worked out; the pasturage was cropped; the dry sage was all gathered and burned. No matter. A man had but one moment of life to call his own, wrote Marcus Aurelius. The moment just passed into the score of time's count, the moment which the hand of the clock trembles over, a hair's breadth yet to go these are no man's to claim.
Struck it rich, boys!" and the miner, almost beside himself with excitement, swiftly gathered the golden bits out of the pan and spread them out on the palm of his hand where all could see. "A good ten ounces!" he almost shouted, as he tossed them up and down to test their weight. "One hundred and sixty dollars! And out of the first pan full of pay-dirt!
So far as our present information goes, we have reason to believe that no gold country ever possessed so large an extent of paying placer mines, with the pay-dirt so near the surface, and with so many facilities for working them as California. In Australia the diggings are very deep and spotted, that is, the gold is unevenly distributed, and the supply of water for mining is scanty.
They may also have a joint-stock sluice at the mouth of the tunnel one company having the privilege of using the sluice one week, and the other the next. All the dirt brought out in a week can readily be washed in a day. The work of taking out the pay-dirt after the main tunnel has been cut, is called "drifting;" and the holes made by the men engaged in it are termed "drifts."
In this kind of mining the "pay-dirt" was shovelled into long wooden boxes called sluices, and a constant stream of water kept the gravel and earth moving on out to a dumping-place. The gold dropped down or settled into riffles, or spaces between bars placed across the bottom of the sluices, and once a week the water was turned off and a "clean-up" made of the gold.
"You betcher, and it's the richest pay-dirt I ever met up with. No wonder Moran has been willin' to do murder to get a-holt of this land. You're a rich man, boy; a millionaire, I reckon." "You mean that we are rich, Bill." The younger man spoke slowly and emphatically. "Whatever comes out of here" he waved his hand toward the creek "is one-half yours. I decided on that long ago.
Tennyson is a man of talent, who happened to strike a lucky vein, which he has worked with cleverness. The adventurer with a pickaxe in Washoe may happen upon like good fortune. The world is full of poetry as the earth is of "pay-dirt;" one only needs to know how to "strike" it. An able man can make himself almost anything that he will.
And so the years rolled by, the spring rains came and went, the woods of Buckeye Hill were level with the ground, the pasture on Dow's Flat grew sear and dry, Eureka Hill yielded its pay-dirt and swamped its owner, the first dividends of the Amity Company were made from the assessments of stockholders, there were new county officers at Monte Flat, his wife's answer had changed into a persistent question, and still old man Plunkett remained.
The boy's grin remained, but his furtive eyes opened a shade wider. "Wot do I want? Gee! You're feelin' friendly." Then he put on a manner he intended to be facetious. "An' me left my patch o' pay-dirt, an' all, to pay a 'party' call. Say, Miss Golden, that ain't sassiety ways in this yer camp." His attempt at pleasantry went for nothing.
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