What is "diggings"

Usage examples of "diggings".

These belonged to the "kopie-wallopers", the previously nomadic diamond buyers who had until recently roamed the diggings, but who had now found it worth their while to set up permanent shop below the crumbling remains of Colesberg kopje.

Today Black Thomas with his "monkey" was king of the diggings, and though his reign might be short, he was determined to reap all the sweets that it promised.

The price of livestock on the diggings was vastly inflated, and his oxen were costing him a guinea a day to water.

The mining commissioner, after the lesson of the diggings at Bultfontein and Dutoitspan, had insisted that these access roads be left open to service the claims in the centre of the growing pit.

However, this law could not control the shady white men that hung around the diggings, ostensibly travelling salesmen, actors or proprietors of infamous drinking canteens but in reality all I.

So obsessed were the diggers with their own race for the hidden glitter of wealth, and so transient the population of the diggings, that a man seemed to know only the names of his immediate neighbours.

In London, Lord Kimberley, Secretary of State for the Colonies, had only just awakened to the potential wealth of the diamond diggings, and for the first time was listening attentively to the pleas of the Imperialists to support old Nicholaas Waterboer's claim and take Griqualand into the sphere of British influence.

His casual sauntering gait carried him from one end of the diggings to the other, at a pace which had Zouga stretching his own legs.

Only black men would work for a wage that made the diggings profitable, and even that beggarly wage was many times more than the Boer f armers of the surrounding backveld republics could afford to Day.

The diamond diggings had denuded the countryside of labourers for five hundred miles around.

For these reasons Boer commandos from the little backveld republics were sweeping the land and patrolling the lonely roads from the north to try and prevent the tribesmen reaching the diggings and instead press them to work upon the land.

Beef was an expensive item on the diggings, and it was with patent distaste that they sampled the greasy stringy mutton that Zouga provided.

The tough sons of a tough out-of-luck digger from the Australian opal fields, they were a matched pair, with shaven heads to inhibit the breeding of lice, bare-footed, for their father was working a poor claim on the eastern edge of the diggings, their braces supporting patched canvas breeches over faded and frayed shirts.

Every member of Zouga's family and following quickly found his place in the work, almost as though a special niche had been reserved for each of them: Jan Cheroot and Jordan at the sorting-table, the Matabele amadoda in the open diggings, and, naturally there was only one place for Ralph, in the diggings with them.

There is a limit to the number of rich ladies who want to hang baubles round their necks, and here on the Vaal diggings we have mined more stones in a few years than were found in the six thousand years before that.