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But American vagrants, with no thoughts save of gold-digging, and an overweening illiterate jargon for their speech, had long ceased to interest this priest, even in his starvation for company and talk from the outside world; and therefore after the intoning, he sat with his homesick thoughts unchanged, to draw both pain and enjoyment from the music that he had set to the Dixit Dominus.
His father provided the information and, simply as a matter of form, consulted him as to his views for the future. It was an important thing to decide upon at short notice, but he was equal to it, and, having suggested gold-digging as the only profession he cared for, was promptly provided by the incensed captain with a stool in the local bank.
But American vagrants, with no thoughts save of gold-digging, and an overweening illiterate jargon for speech, had long ceased to interest this priest, even in his starvation for company and talk from the outside world; and therefore after the intoning he sat with his homesick thoughts unchanged, to draw both pain and enjoyment from the music that he had set to the Dixit Dominus.
"But how does it happen that you are in such straits just now?" asked Charlie, seeing that Buck paused, and seemed unwilling to make further explanations. "Well, the fact is, we have not been successful of late; no chances have come in our way, and two of our best men have taken their departure one to gold-digging in California, the other to the happy hunting grounds of the Redskin, or elsewhere.
Certain other miners looked sorrowful; it was evident that they, too, had been reckless, and had trusted to luck, and that in a place where gold-digging and gambling were the only two means of proving the correctness of their theory, it was not difficult to imagine by which one they were disappointed.
"Tit you effer find a nokket?" inquired the inarticulate German, eagerly. "No. I have been most kinds of fool in my time," returned Loudon, "but not the gold-digging variety. Every man has a sane spot somewhere." "Well, then," suggested some one, "did you ever smuggle opium?" "Yes, I did," said Loudon. "Was there money in that?" "All the way," responded Loudon.
Tin-dish-washing is difficult to describe. It requires a watchful eye and a skilful hand; it is the most mysterious department of the gold-digging business. The one I used was rather smaller.
Robinson, in fact, not only saved his own and his partner's lives, by common consent he was elected captain at the gold-diggings, and by his authority some sort of law and order were established throughout the camp, and all thefts were heavily punished. The finding of a large nugget by Robinson ended gold-digging for these two men.
Back by the Coulterville trail, the peaks of Sierra Nevada in sight, across the North Fork of the Merced, by Gentry's Gulch, over hills and through cañons, to Fremont's again, and thence to Stockton and San Francisco all this at the end of August, when there has been no rain for four months, and the air is dear and very hot, and the ground perfectly dry; windmills, to raise water for artificial irrigation of small patches, seen all over the landscape, while we travel through square miles of hot dust, where they tell us, and truly that in winter and early spring we should be up to our knees in flowers; a country, too, where surface gold-digging is so common and unnoticed that the large, six-horse stage-coach, in which I travelled from Stockton to Hornitos, turned off in the high road for a Chinaman, who, with his pan and washer, was working up a hole which an American had abandoned, but where the minute and patient industry of the Chinaman averaged a few dollars a day.
Those considerations were at all times the most important to the settler when the place of his abode was to be determined upon; and, with these advantages at large, the company of squatters, of whom Mark Forrester, made one, by no means the least important among them, had regularly, for the purposes of gold-digging, colonized the little precinct into which we have now ventured to penetrate.
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