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Prospector   /prˈɔspˌɛktər/   Listen
Prospector

noun
1.
Someone who explores an area for mineral deposits.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Prospector" Quotes from Famous Books



... said McCann, disdainfully, as he got into his boat, "he wasn't nothing but a prospector doing the lake for one ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... unfold. Its history's written round and bold— Brave buccaneers upon the "Spanish Main", The army's march across the lenght'ning plain, The lone prospector wandering o'er the hill, The hunter's camp, thy ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... me the story. He had been an old prospector in the Klondike, but not a successful one, as he was too honest. On his return, from Alaska, he had to stop in Denver and work for his fare back to the East where he came from. Being a splendid engineer as well as a mineralogist, he found a place with a crew of mining ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... he said coolly. "I found out that it was one thing to go down there as a skilled prospector might go to examine a mine that was to be valued according to his report of the indications, but that it was entirely another thing to go and play the spy in a poor devil's house in order to buy something he didn't know he was selling and ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... fashion, as will be related in the next volume of this series, to be called "Dave Porter in the Gold Fields; or, The Search for the Landslide Mine," in which we will learn how Dave went West with some of his chums, and joined an old prospector in a hunt for a lost mine that had been willed to ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer

... had she been aware that its foundations were of gold, conceived that its climate and soil were a more enduring source of wealth than ever she would command again. If Rezanov was not gifted with the prospector's sense for ores—although he had taken note of Arguello's casual reference to a vein of silver and lead in the Monterey hills—no man ever more thoroughly appreciated the visible resources of California than he. Baranhov, chief-manager of the Company, had talked with American and British ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... old prospector that died last year, he lost his mind lookin' for the big lode. Made some rich strikes in his day, Joe did, but he never could stop to work 'em. He was always waitin' for the mother of 'em all, he said, who'd put him on the road to ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill

... scenery in the valley of the Yosemite and the snow-capped peaks of the sierras. At first there were few women, and the men led a wild, lawless existence in the mining camps. Hard upon the heels of the prospector followed the dram-shop, the gambling-hell, and the dance-hall. Every man carried his "Colt," and looked out for his own life and his "claim." Crime went unpunished or was taken in hand, when it got too rampant, by vigilance committees. In the diggings ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... to me, from what I've heard of it," growled the older prospector, "that the Double Cross would have been a heap more fittin' name for it. It's busted everybody ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... was soon asleep, without supper or blanket. On awakening in the morning, I found myself covered with several inches of snow, and felt tired, hungry and depressed. I plodded along toward home for a few hours, and came to a cabin occupied by a lone prospector, who got me up a meal of coffee, tough beef and wheat flour bread, baked in a frying pan with a tin cover over it. Soon after finishing the meal I felt sick and very weak, and was unable to proceed on ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton

... Siberia. Billy watched the Government vessel sink below the horizon with some uneasiness, for his sole property now consisted of the furs he stood up in. His boat, clothes and even mining tools had all been bartered for food, and the discomfited prospector was now living practically on the charity of his savage hosts. The reflection, therefore, that nine long months must be passed in this Arctic prison was not a pleasant one, especially as the natives had already indulged in one of the "drink orgies" which were afterwards ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... of the Southwest fought stubbornly, but the wars that meant life and death to them were the merest pastime for an army that had just completed the humiliation of a nation of the size and strength of Mexico. The Indians were swept aside, and the country was opened to the trapper, the prospector, the ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing

... even the barbed wire fence on either side scintillates. The house is too small, I am going out on the River Road, and see the cherry blossoms on the hill sides and the sunlight on the water, and feel the road under my feet. I feel like a prospector who has struck gold. Whatever comes of it all, for this one day I am going to give full rein to my fancy and be gloriously ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... know for sure, but there are people who say she was with a prospector in his shack four or five miles from my ranch. I didn't hear about it until afterward; but, anyhow, there was a man rode back with her to her father's ranch who got her into the hospital in Denver after she found her father was dead. She thinks she's better than I am, but, just the same, ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... was an old miner and prospector, a man the boys had met years before in Colorado, when they went to that section of our country to locate a mine belonging to their father. As related in detail in "The Rover Boys Out West," Wumble had been of great assistance to them and he knew them all well. He had, after numerous stirring ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield

... there are few "traces" of literary performance; but there are some very interesting drawings, some of which are reproduced in this volume. A story is back of them. They were the illustrations to a book. "Joe" Dixon, prospector and inveterate fortune-seeker, came to Austin from the Rockies in 1883, at the constant urging of his old pal, Mr. John Maddox, "Joe," kept writing Mr. Maddox, "your fortune's in your pen, not your pick. Come to Austin and write an account of your ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... dad's sake," went on Tom. "Hello, Mr. Peterson!" he called, as he noticed the old prospector coming along. "Have ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton

... not unwilling that his friend should find some entertaining distraction in St Egbert's, would look at the owners of these faces with a prospector's eye and his own ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston

... down the instigator and perpetrator of the crime, and a small fortune was placed at the disposal of Kars' trusted attorneys for that purpose. For the rest he would be personally responsible. In Bill Brudenell he had a willing and sagacious lieutenant. In Abe Dodds, and in the hard-living expert prospector, Joe Saunders, he had a staff for his enterprise on Bell River beyond words in capacity ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... perceived that the incidents of his town visits were the proper thing. He would not have had them different—to look back on. They were inspiring—to write home about. He recognised all the types—the miner, the gambler, the saloon-keeper, the bad man, the cowboy, the prospector—just as though they had stepped living from the pages of his classics. They had the true slouch; they used the picturesque language. The log cabins squared with his ideas. The broncos even ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... I differed much from other boys in my school days, was just as full of fun and mischief as any of them, but there was no real harm in me that I knew of. My father is a miner, a prospector, always on the lookout for, and locating, claims. Mother was always a hardworking little woman, and raised a large family. We had a neighbor who didn't like us, neither did he like my dog, which, just as any ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts

... wish I could take each of you by the ear and lead you away by yourselves, and show you how many ruins strew the road to success, and how life is like a mining boom. We only hear of those who strike it rich. The hopeful, industrious prospector who failed to find the contact and finally filled a nameless grave, is soon forgotten when he is gone, but a million tongues tell to forty million listening ears of the man who struck it ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... received a letter from his father, in Bloomfield, rather mysteriously requesting him to pay a visit to the lost town of the Picket Posts and to report at length upon anything he might find in the only habitable building of the camp. Aided by a prospector named Nick Porter, Frank and his chums visited Happenchance and there found the professor. They had adventures in helping the professor get his location notice on file, and only Merry's fleetness of foot and good judgment saved a ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish

... daily press shocking stories of the ferocity of bears. What a pity that the truth of these stories cannot always be run to earth! Billy Le Heup, a prospector and guide of northern Ontario, once having occasion to call for his mail in a little backwoods settlement, opened a newspaper and was shocked to learn that a most harrowing affliction had befallen an old friend of his, by name—But I'm sorry I have forgotten it, so let us call him Jones. The ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... legends connected with the western mining history is that early in the 60s George M. Pullman was a poor prospector and had secured a lease on a piece of mining ground in Colorado, and that he formed the idea of the sleeping car from the tiers of bunks in the miners' lodging house, "bunk houses" they are called. However that may be Mr. Pullman ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love

... hootch-maker was hidden in a smoke cloud, but his voice drawled on as calmly as ever: "Wall, from what I hearn tell when I'm over at the Chilcat Cannery, Chief, you may get a chance to see a white woman at Katleean purty soon. There's a prospector named Boreland a-cruisin' up the coast in his own schooner, the Hoonah, and from what I can make out he's got his wife ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... page, in every line. As his vision enlarges, he perceives new relations between his study and his future aims, indeed, between his study and the progress of the universe. And he goes to his educational tasks not as a prisoner weighted down by ball and chain, but as an eager prospector infatuated by the lust for gold. Encouraged by the continual stores of new things he uncovers, intoxicated by the ozone of mental activity, he delves continually deeper until finally he emerges rich with knowledge and full of power—the intellectual ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson

... approaching it. But in the annals of mining discovery, how often has the resources of a great mine been made known and available to human enterprise by the crude, simple apparatus of a travelling prospector, and how many hopeless and worthless "properties" have swallowed the contributions of a gullable public through the ornamental reports of the skilled and cultured proprietor of ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... back into his chair. He said to the two bodyguards, stationed at the door, "Scotty, Rogers, go and make the arrangements to bring that damned prospector into line." ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... machine invented to facilitate the separation of the ore from its native element; or a man busily engaged in working a rocker, a much smaller and simpler machine used for the same object; or, more primitive still, some solitary prospector with a pan of dirt in his hands, which he is carefully washing at the water's edge to see if he can "get the color," as it is technically phrased, which means, literally, the smallest ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... was first settled in 1859. It obtained its name from an old prospector, James Finney, nicknamed "Old Virginny." Its elevation is ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton

... distance to which ore can be expected to extend below the lowest level grows less with every deeper working horizon. The really superficial character of ore-deposits, even outside of the region of secondary enrichment is becoming every year better recognized. The prospector's idea that "she gets richer deeper down," may have some basis near the surface in some metals, but it is not an idea which prevails in the minds of engineers who have to work in depth. The writer, with some others, prepared a list of several hundred ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover

... nothing in this that discouraged Norman and Roy and even Paul seemed interested in the unloading of the boats. Before this was begun, however, Moosetooth spoke in an undertone to Colonel Howell and, shrugging his shoulders, the prospector waved ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler

... popes; a nation invokes its God before beginning a campaign of murder, rape and pillage. The ruthless exploitation of India becomes the civilizing fulfilment of the "white man's burden"; not infrequently the missionary, drummer, and prospector are embodied in one man. In the nineteenth century church, press and university devoted no inconsiderable part of their time to proving the high moral and scientific justice of child labor and human sweating. It is a matter ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... saved by some fortunate chance, and wandering along the river bank, stumbled on the camp of some prospector or trapper making his way to the wild North? His mind clutched at this new hope, eagerly. Hurriedly he climbed the sticky bank and began feverishly to search for any sign that could help him. Then suddenly ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... With the greater part of my Hadley-and-Shelton earnings in my pocket, and with muscles camp-hardened sufficiently to enable me to hold my own as a workingman, I decided to take a chance and become a prospector. ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... lizard darts across the trail, a sage rabbit darts behind a yucca bush, and far overhead a tireless buzzard floats in circles. Is he keeping a death watch on the grizzled old "Desert Rat" we pass a little later? His face burned and seamed with the desert's heat and storms, the old prospector cheerfully waved at us, as he shared his beans and sour dough with a diminutive burro, which bore his master's pack during the long search through the trackless desert for the elusive gold. For us it would be suicide to leave the blazed trail. The chances ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... Thus the "habits" of the metal, so to speak, must be studied by experiment with patient labour, the most accomplished mineralogist may pass over rich alluvium without recognizing its presence, where the rude prospector of California and Australia will find an abundance of stream-gold. Evidently the proportion of "tailings" must carefully be laid down before companies are justified in undertaking the expensive operation of quartz-crushing. Hence ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... of northern British Columbia to visit me at the Great Oaks School. She had gotten into pathetic physical condition. Fifteen years previously she had remarried. Tom, her new husband, had been a gold prospector and general mountain man, a wonderfully independent and cantankerous cuss, a great hunter and wood chopper and all around good-natured backwoods homestead handyman. Tom had tired of solitary log cabin life and to solve his problem had taken on the care and feeding of ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... a law office in Monterey Centre, Dick McGill had begun the publication of the Monterey Centre Journal of fragrant memory, Lithopolis began to advertise its stone quarries, and Grizzly Reed, an old California prospector, who had had his ear torn off by a bear out in the mountains, began prospecting for gold along the creek, and talking mysteriously. The sale of lots in Lithopolis ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... Alaska are strict—toward sportsmen, only! The miners, "prospectors" and Indians may kill as many as they please, "for food purposes." This opens the door to a great amount of unfair slaughter. Any coffee-cooler can put a pan and pick into his hunting outfit, go out after moose, and call himself a "prospector." ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... another prospector was sent out by a more important company. The Earl of Southampton and Sir Ferdinando Gorges were the chief promoters of this enterprise. Gorges, as 'Lord Proprietary of the Province of Maine,' is a well-known character ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... occupied by the Fathers, the retainers, and the employees who had been trained to agriculture and the simple branches of mechanics. The presbytery, or the rectory, was the chief guest-house in the land. There were no hotels in the California of that day, but the traveller, the prospector, the speculator, was ever welcome at the mission board; and it was a bountiful board until the rapacity of the Federal Government laid it waste. Alexander Forbes, in his "History of Upper and Lower California" (London, 1839), states that the population of Upper California in 1831 ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... these routes spoke of the beautiful valleys to be crossed, of the lovely streams filled with fish, of the game and fruit. Each was called "the poor man's route," because with a few ponies and a gun the prospector could traverse the entire distance during the summer, "arriving on the banks of the Yukon, not merely browned and hearty, but a veteran of ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... faint twinkle in Ida Stirling's eyes, and fancied that he understood it. Very few of the inhabitants of that country climb for pleasure, and it is difficult to obtain any of the regulation mountaineering paraphernalia there; but when the wandering prospector finds a snow-crested range in his way he usually scrambles over it and carries his provisions and blankets along with him. The fact that there are no routes mapped out, and no chalets or club shelters to sleep in, does not trouble men of ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... Reserve, previously created. The area thus set apart as "a public park for the benefit and enjoyment of the people" (Act of March 2, 1899) was already known to a few enthusiasts and explorers as one of the world's great wonderlands. In 1861 James Longmire, a prospector, had built a trail from Yelm over Mashell mountain and up the Nisqually river to Bear Prairie. This he extended in 1884 to the spot now known as Longmire Springs, and thence up the Nisqually and Paradise rivers to the region now called Paradise Park. Part of this trail ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams

... an American super-cargo ascended the Rembwe River, the south-eastern line of the Gaboon fork, and is said to have collected "dirt" which, tested at New York, produced 16 dollars per bushel. All the old residents in the Gaboon know the story of the gold dust. The prospector was the late Captain Richard E. Lawlin, of New York, who was employed by Messrs. Bishop of Philadelphia, the same house that commissioned the chasseur de gorilles to collect "rubber" for them, and who was so eminently useful to the young French ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... clerk, shop assistant, and labourer from the metropolis; the shearer, drover, and pearler from the north-west and far north; the farmer from the eastern and south-western districts; the timber worker; and the miner and prospector from the goldfields. In all some 150 civil occupations were represented, the principal ones being as follows:—Labourers 199, farmers and farm hands 109, miners and prospectors 70, timber workers 64, clerks 60, carpenters and joiners 27, ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett

... the conviction that very much of the country is not explored as it should be, and I have been told by prospectors for precious minerals, who were serving in our army, of the wonderful store of mineral deposits in German East Africa. One noted prospector who fell into my hands at Handeni could so little forget his occupation of peace in this new reality of war, that he always took out his prospector's hammer on patrol with him, and chipped pieces of likely rock to bring back to camp in his haversack. He it was who told me ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... to drive her spurs home and pass that place at a racing gallop, but she checked the impulse sharply and began to reason. In the first place, it was doubtless only the cabin of some prospector, such as she had often heard of. In the second place, night was almost upon her, and she saw no desirable camping-place, or at least any with ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick

... northern mines. No pedestrian could keep up with him, as with his long form bending forward, his immense yellow beard that reached to his breast floating in the wind, he strode from camp to camp with the message of salvation. It took a good trotting-horse to keep pace with him. Many a stout prospector, meeting him on a highway, after panting and straining to bear him company, had to fall behind, gazing after him in wonder, as he swept out of sight at that marvelous gait. There was a glitter in his eye, and an intensity of gaze that left you in doubt whether it was ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... have an excitement and a stampede all its own. An energetic prospector from Georgetown, El Dorado County, named Knox, discovered a big ledge of quartz in Squaw Valley. It was similar rock to that in which the Comstock silver was found in large quantities. Though the ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... there as Basutos live in Basutoland, or Indians in Indian territory, or the inhabitants of a protected state in India. Guarantee them, as long as they remain peaceable under the British flag, complete protection from the invasion of the miner or the prospector. Let them live their own lives in their own way, with some simple form of home rule of their own. The irreconcilable men who could never rub shoulders with the British could find a home there, and the British colonies would ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... pirate, a very wicked old man indeed. Nor is the backer any better. He is middle-aged, has a bad record, and is not in any sense of the word a gentleman, but he has plenty of money—made it first in California oil, then grub-staked a prospector in British Columbia, cheated him out of his share of the big lode he discovered and doubled his own wealth half a dozen times over. A very undesirable, unlikeable sort of a man. But he believes in luck, and is confident that he'll make at least fifty millions out of our adventure and ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... department orders was detailed in his place. This made him independent of almost everybody, beside placing in his hands large quantities of commissary and quartermaster stores which were worth far more to the miner, prospector and teamster than their invoice price. The stories that began to come into Yuma and Drum Barracks, and other old-time stations, of the "high jinks" going on day and night at Nevins' camp, the orders for liquors, cigars and supplies received ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... camera," he said to Bill Holmes. "The light's too tricky to-day to work by, but I'll give you a few pointers that you'll have to keep in mind when I'm too busy to think about telling you. Once I get to directing a scene, I'm liable to be busy as a one-armed prospector fighting a she-bear with cubs. I'm counting on you to remember what all I'va told you, in case I forget to tell you again. You see, I've ruined a hundred and fifty feet of negative already, just by overlooking ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... of knowledge. With assumptions the intellectual prospector stakes out the infinite. In life we may not verify our premises, but death is ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... for agriculture only. No minerals of commercial value are there; although iron ore is found in Pawling and nearby towns. On the confines of the Hill, in Deuell Hollow, a shaft was driven into the hillside for forty feet, by some lonely prospector, and then abandoned; to be later on seized upon and made the traditional location of a gold mine. The Quaker Hill imagination is more fertile and varied than Quaker Hill land. No commercial advantages have ever fallen ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson

... outdoors. Many a royal evening was passed in the cabin of a miner or a prospector, or by the fireside of a family who for some reason had left the old home behind and sought seclusion in wild scenes, miles from neighbors. Among Colorado's mountains there are an unusual number of strong characters who are trying again. They are strong ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... prospector proceeded to the Golden Gate Hotel and inquired for Judge Stillman's room. A boy attempted to take his name, but he seized him by the scruff of the neck and sat him in his seat, proceeding unannounced to the suite to which he had been directed. Hearing voices, he knocked, and ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... Ryan went on. "Dave comes to town from a long day's ride. He tells Rutherford that he has been prospecting and has found gold in Lonesome Park. Nothing to that. Dave is a cattleman, not a prospector. Rutherford knows that as well as I do. But he falls right in with Dingwell's story. He offers to go partners with Dave on his gold mine—keeps talking about it—insists on going ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... impossible on its face. Some woodcutters on the hills above El Dorado had been getting out dry timber for the drift fires, so ran the report, and in shooting the tree-trunks down into the valley they had discovered a deposit of wash gravel. One of them, possessed of the prospector's instinct, had gophered a capful of the gravel from off the rim where the plunging tree-trunks had dug through the snow and exposed the outcropping bedrock, and, to satisfy his curiosity, had taken it down to camp ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... have been gratifying to the former prospector and miner to come back to Carson City a person of consequence, where less than a year before he had been regarded as no more than an amusing indolent fellow, a figure to smile at, but unimportant. There is a photograph extant of Clemens and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... two reached the little house in the lane a surprise awaited them. They found Mrs. Erldon in her husband's arms. He had returned unexpectedly, having, as a successful prospector for gold, done well enough to return home at once to fetch his wife ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... And you needn't believe a word that Kie Wicks says. He doesn't want people to come into this canyon. He believes in the myth about the treasure and he makes it hard for anyone who comes in. One old prospector had to leave because Kie had it in for him. He just ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm

... his mind when he first saw the man— maybe a prospector. But he noticed the man's long, shoulder-length, sandy-colored hair, his dark skin, his Oriental features and his ski- pant type ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... forehead he once more commenced digging here and there in a most tantalizing fashion. Toby could not comprehend what it could mean. Was there gold or some other precious deposit to be found up here among these hills, and might this strange man be an old prospector from the West who had had long experience in searching for mineral lodes? But then such things were seldom discovered so near the top of the ground, Toby recollected. He wished the man would go away so he could speak to Jack, and ask him what he thought; because the more ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton

... The old prospector turned it over in his hands, bit it and then held it in his palm as though to judge its weight. His expert opinion was, "It's gold, Okie," and was uttered ...
— Jubilation, U.S.A. • G. L. Vandenburg

... several ways. He had no fences and would employ any misfit or doubtful that came along. He seemed to prey on one side of the ridge and sell on the other. But in all the years he escaped conviction of even a minor offense. In an early day, a lone prospector was missing. Everybody had ideas, but no evidence. Dan Hale's stacks were burned. No evidence. And so it ran ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... divorce a possible external product from its terrestrial merger: then our joy of the prospector who thinks ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... a brigadier the first vacancy, and that, if the war lasts, he won't stop there. He'll go very high. You know Carewe?—how he talks? 'Yes, by God, sir, Dick Cleave's son's got the stuff in him! Always was a kind of dumb, heroic race. Lot of iron ore in that soil, some gold, too. Only needed the prospector, Big Public Interest, to come along. Shouldn't wonder if he carved his name pretty high on the cliff.'—Now, Judith, I have stopped beneath this lamp just to see you look the transfigured lover—happier at praise of him than at garlands and garlands for yourself!—Hm! Drawn to the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... science. He took charge of the boys and, when the trip was ended, started a school at Falun, where he taught mineralogy. It had been hit or miss with the miners up till then. There was neither science nor system in their work. What every-day experience or the test of fire had taught a prospector, in delving among the rocks, was all there was of it. Linnaeus was getting things upon a scientific basis, when he met and fell in love with the handsome daughter of Dr. Moraeus. The young people ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... the questions: "How do you find fossils?" "How do you know where to look for them?" One of the charms of the fossil-hunter's life is the variety, the element of certainty combined with the gambling element of chance. Like the prospector for gold, the fossil-hunter may pass suddenly from the extreme of dejection to the extreme of elation. Luck comes in a great variety of ways: sometimes as the result of prolonged and deliberate scientific search in a region which is known to ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew

... evolution of the American short story, and he did for the mining-camps of California what Clemens wrought for the Mississippi River: he became their profane poet. Yet he was never really of them. He was the clever outsider, with a prospector's eye, looking for literary material, and finding a whole rich mine of it—a bigger and richer, in fact, than he was really qualified to work. But he located a golden vein of it with an instinct that did credit ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... night set in with its dead silence, was one in which Cameron's mind was thronged with memories of a time long past—of a home back in Peoria, of a woman he had wronged and lost, and loved too late. He was a prospector for gold, a hunter of solitude, a lover of the drear, rock-ribbed infinitude, because he wanted to be ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... little valley with its chattering, milk-white stream, softening the scars of the mountains with their great refuse dumps; reminders of hopes of twenty years before and as bare of vegetation as in the days when the pick and gad and drill of the prospector tore the rock loose from its hiding place under the surface of the ground. Nature, in the mountainous country, resents any outrage against her dignity; the scars never heal; the mine dumps of a score of years ago remain the same, without ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... The prospector is the advance agent of progress, civilization and prosperity. * * * It is for the sight of a yellow streak in his pan that he has been tempted to endure the fatigue, cold, and hunger of the mountains, and the heat, thirst and horror of ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... the smallest losses. Many of those working the mining game—and by this is meant selling stocks on wind and water—have made use of this fact. To-day in the majority of cases we have, in place of the prospector or the company selling stock direct to the suckers, the financial or fiscal agent. He operates either under the name of a banking firm or as a security company, which is generally a registered trade-name intended as a cloak to cover the names of individuals ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... world is there with this sophistry, feeds him with it as a nurse feeds pap to a crying child, until he's full and temporarily comatose. But just suppose for an instant that the same argument were used in any other field of endeavor. Suppose, for instance, you told the prospector who'd spent years searching for and who'd finally found a gold mine that his reward should be in the mere knowledge of having found it, the feeling of elation that he had added to the sum total of the world's wealth, and that ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... something needled at his mind, until he swung back. The man who had just passed was carrying a lunch basket, and was wearing the coveralls of one of the crop-prospector crews; but the expression on his ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey

... phosphate here in the Harpeth bend when I met him over in Boliver before I came to Sweetbriar. In fact, I had tried to come to look over the fields just to kill time when I nearly killed myself and fell down upon you. Do you suppose he could have sent the prospector?" Again Everett brought Uncle Tucker back to the uninteresting topic of what might lay under the fields, the top of which he ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... MacHenry had been a prospector in the region and he had opened a mine close to that ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill

... that we've bin hitting the right trail," declared Pete. "Last time I come this way was with an old prospector who knew this part of the country well enough to 'pick up' a clump of cactus. If that compass is right, ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... the state suggests at once the probability of deposits of ores of the precious metals, and the cursory prospecting already done justifies the outlook. Practically the entire mountain regions are enticing fields for the prospector. Substantial rewards have already been realized by many who have chanced the hardships, and there are now in operation many mining enterprises which are yearly adding a substantial sum to the output of the wealth of the state. The ores occur chiefly in veins of low grade and great width ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell

... is called the "prospector's cache" and consists simply of a stick lashed to two trees and another long pole laid across this to which the goods are hung, swinging beneath like a hammock. This cache is hung high enough to be out of reach ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard

... when Joseffy exhumed it, while the C-sharp minor, with its strong climaxes, its middle sections so evocative of Beethoven's Sonata in the same key—have you mastered its content? The Preludes are a perfect field for the "prospector"; though Essipoff and Arthur Friedheim played them in a single program. Nor must we overlook the so-called hackneyed valses, the tinkling charm of the one in G-flat, the elegiac quality of the one in B minor. The Barcarolle is only for heroes. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... head was partly bald, and his small, gray eyes were set well back under shaggy eyebrows. His face was covered with a generous growth of dirty-gray whiskers, stained darkly about the mouth from his pipe. He was a typical old mountain prospector who had ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley

... Ramsey was a prospector by nature made proficient by practice. He had prospected in every mining camp from Mexico to Moose Factory. If he were to find a real bonanza, his English-American friend used to say, he would be miserable for the balance of his days, or rather his to-morrows. He lived in his to-morrows,—in ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman

... he'd been content with a wage and a master he'd have done better by her, but from the start he'd wanted his freedom, balked at being roped and branded with the herd. That was why he drifted back to mining, not a steady job, though he could have got it, but as a prospector, leaving Arizona and moving to California. There were years of it; he knew the mineral belt from the Panamint mountains to the Kootenai country. Juana and Pancha plodded from town to town, seeing him at intervals, always expecting to hear he'd struck ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... his spare bedrooms and his pyjamas, he never showed it. He was fully as pleasant to Percy Shanklyn, the elegant, perpetually resting English actor, whom he disliked as far as he was capable of disliking any one, as he was to Hank Jardine, the prospector, and Hank's prize-fighter friend, Steve Dingle, both ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... No care-free prospector, singing his way through the Mojave Desert and suddenly finding himself confronted by a rattlesnake, could have experienced so abrupt a change of mood as did Ginger at this revolting spectacle. Even in their native ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... the world of straight lines, conventional methods, and formal affairs. The other was something freer, wider, and nearer to nature. Tom Kingman had not been cut to any pattern. He had been mule-driver, cowboy, ranger, soldier, sheriff, prospector, and cattleman. Now, when he was bank president, his old comrades from the prairies, of the saddle, tent, and trail found no change in him. He had made his fortune when Texas cattle were at the high tide of value, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... a British parapet was in the edge of a wood. Board walks ran across the spongy earth here and there; the doors of little shanties with earth roofs opened on to those streets, which were called Piccadilly and the Strand. I was reminded of a pleasant prospector's camp in Alaska. Only, everybody was in uniform and occasionally something whished through the branches of the trees. One looked up to see what it was and where it was going, this stray ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... Kennesaw Mountain rises like a huge blue billow out of the horizon and lends picturesqueness to the view. Mr. Woodward was in excellent humour. He had just made up his mind in regard to a matter that had given him no little trouble. A wandering prospector, the agent of a company of Boston capitalists, had told him a few hours before that he would be offered twenty thousand dollars for his land-lot on Hog Mountain. This was very important, but it was not of the highest importance. He nodded familiarly to Kennesaw, and thought: "I'll ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... week before the hunters were expected home, a packet came addressed to Moya. It was a journal letter from Paul, mailed by some returning prospector chance encountered in the forest as the party were going in. Moya read it aloud, with asterisks, to a family audience which did not ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... mighty swing of his pick the former prospector dislodged a pile of the rough stones of which the cairn was composed and the boys, too, laid on with a will. In an hour or so all that was left of the once lofty cairn ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... was! Down at Lake Valley. I put up a few hundred for the prospector, and he gave me a bunch of stock. Before we'd got anything out of it, my brother-in-law died of the fever in Cuba. My sister was beside herself to get his body back to Colorado to bury him. Seemed foolish to me, but she's the only sister I got. It's expensive ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... them appeared a face, gaunt, grimed, a blood-stained bandage around the brow, and a pair of glowing, burning eyes looking out beneath. Uncle Pros had failed to find Mavity Bence, and was returning. Too dazed to comprehend mere words, the old prospector read instantly and aright the attitude and expression of the two. As they tied the last knot in the handkerchief, he loomed above ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... The prospector is forbidden to exceed five hundred feet up and down a stream, following the course of the valley, but the width may run from base to base of the mountains. Thus a miner's claim is one of the few things that is often broader than it is long. ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis

... permit it on receiving orders from headquarters. He had opened the letter standing outside his hut, where it had been handed to him by the native runner, and Stanley was reading a newspaper near, while Moore affectionately handled an antediluvian gun he was thinking of buying from a prospector. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... in the sun, a thing almost tangible; and then it faded. I felt a sense of actual loss. So real had been the illusion that I could not believe I was not soon to drink and wade and dabble in the cool waters. Disappointment was keen. This is what maddens the prospector or sheep-herder lost in the desert. Was it not a terrible thing to be dying of thirst, to see sparkling water, almost to smell it and then realize suddenly that all was only a lying track of the desert, a lure, ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... had seen a mummy in a museum, it was some old prospector who had been lying in the Nevada desert for a hundred years or so. I was going to look like him, dried up, yellow, my teeth protruding in a grin, perfectly preserved. With no pilot, the ship would go into a cometary orbit around the sun. Maybe in a hundred years ...
— Last Resort • Stephen Bartholomew

... they turned abruptly to the left and made up the shore. At least, the character of the rocky country favored this idea. As far as he could see, it grew more and more inviting, looked at from the viewpoint of a miner, or a prospector for precious minerals. ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson

... but it had been well done. They must have dragged the timbers down from the White Mountains. Indeed a number of unused beams, both trunks of trees and squared, still lay around outside. From time to time, since the original operations, some locoed prospector comes projecting along and does a little work in hopes he may find something the other fellow had missed. So the passage was crazy with props and supports, new and old, placed to brace the ageing overhead timbers. Going in they were a confounded nuisance against the bumped head; but looking ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... mono-rail development naturally absorbed a vast amount of public attention, and there was also a huge excitement consequent upon the amazing gold discoveries off the coast of Anglesea made by a submarine prospector, Miss Patricia Giddy. She had taken her degree in geology and mineralogy in the University of London, and while working upon the auriferous rocks of North Wales, after a brief holiday spent in agitating for women's suffrage, she had been struck by the possibility of these reefs cropping up again ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... who had ridden back up the canyon after finding Pete, had found the spot where he had been shot, about five miles from the exit on the plain, but had failed to discover anything indicating who had done it. Other searchers also reported failure. There had been burro tracks of some prospector seen at a point about six miles from the canyon, but nothing to show that the owner of them had been in ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... probably gathered in council. The sixty-foot "lot," the front of which the tree graced, fell to the ownership of a man who, erecting a house under its beneficent protection, soon complained of its shade. Then came a lumber prospector, who saw only furniture in the still flourishing old black walnut. His offer of forty dollars for the tree was eagerly accepted by the Philistine who had the title to the land, and although there were not wanting such remonstrances as almost came to a breaking ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... goes out in search of a mine is called a "prospector." The best prospector is a man who has learned to keep his eyes open and to recognize the signs of gold and silver and other metals. A faithful friend goes with him, a donkey or mule which carries his bacon and beans, blankets, saucepan, and a few tools, such as a pan, ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan

... out alone with a prospector's outfit, and finally brought up here. I 've been here now, I guess, about ten years, and it's very likely that I 'll stay here all the rest of my life. I 've got a prospect hole over on the other side of that hill ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly

... the futility of commanding a lot of things she could not eat, just for the fun of making a large bill. She was like the traditional prospector who struck it rich and, hastening to civilization, could think of nothing to order but "forty dollars' ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... that Rhodes made the Rhodesian diamond deal a prospector came to him and said: "If I bring you a handful of rough ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... few "old timers " roam the foot-hills, prospecting, and working over the old claims; but "dust," "nuggets," and "pockets " still form the burden of conversation in the village barroom or the cross-roads saloon. Now and then a "strike " is made by some lucky - or perhaps it turns out, unlucky - prospector. This for a few days kindles anew the slumbering spark of "gold fever" that lingers in the veins of the people here, ever ready to kindle into a flame at every bit of exciting news, in the way of a lucky "find" near home, or new gold-fields in some distant land. These occasions never fail ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... tributaries. About four o'clock we stopped beside a raging torrent and went into camp to reconnoitre. There were signs of some one having been here about a month before, and as the animals were shod we judged it was some prospector. The next day was so wet and Prof. was feeling so sick that we kept our camp, having made tents out of paulins and pack-covers, which gave me a chance to plot up the trail from Kanab to this point, one hundred and three miles. Instead of crossing the torrent the following day, June ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... privation and hardship, and possessing unbounded confidence in their leader, though he was by no means the oldest man of the party, and not a "native." But Grainger had had great experience as an explorer and prospector, for he had been compelled to begin the battle of life when but a lad of fifteen. His father, once a fairly wealthy squatter in the colony of Victoria, was ruined by successive droughts, and died leaving his station deeply mortgaged ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke

... a prospector now and then," he said. "Last year I travelled a hundred and twenty-seven days without seeing a human face except that of my ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... old German prospector, I suppose; but never mind, the place is all right enough. Come! Hurry up! We are going to stop here and land freight. There is an officer stationed here. See those low white walls? That is where he lives. Captain Bernard of ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes

... traveled over three thousand miles of it and had experienced many a strange adventure. Not least of these was the rediscovery of the Seven Mines of Siberia. These mines had first been discovered by an American prospector who, having crossed Bering Strait one summer with natives in their skin boats, had explored the Arctic Siberian rivers. He believed that there was an abundance of the precious yellow metal on the Kamchatkan Peninsula, just as there ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell

... technical details given in local gold-digger's phraseology which would only be intelligible to a backwoods prospector or a Leichardt's Land mining expert. McKeith read all the details carefully, turning the page over and back again in order to read it once more. There was no doubt—making due allowance for Moongarr Bill's exaggerative optimism—that the find was ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... person. This was a quick way to lose them—and perhaps his life. Some day, thought Grant wishfully, some big-shot would come along and clean out The Pass and then the little honest men would be safe. On the rare occasions when a prospector did find something of value and get back to land he would be allowed to keep it. Grant wished he had a lot of power or a lot of money. He'd take over the clean-up job. But a fellow like him, without friends, without influence, without money, ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis

... but they can't work, or turn out of bed in the morning. We should have been loaded and started an hour ago. It's you an' me for the big work. Pretty soon you'll hear 'em shoutin' for their coffee—in bed, mind you, and them grown men. What d'ye know about boatin' on the water? I'm a cowman and a prospector, but I'm sure tenderfooted on water, an' they don't know punkins. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... shadows of a small gully in front of him caught Dixon's eye. Tucking the body of the quail inside his tunic for later examination, he hurried down into the gully. A moment later he was standing by what had been the night camp of a prospector. ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... in 1847, believing his wife and the son he had never seen to be dead, Hunt Rennie had gone west. In contrast to the tragedy of his personal life, whatever Rennie had turned his hand to in the new territory had prospered. A prospector he had grub-staked, found the Oro Cruz, one of the richest mines in the Tubacca hills. Rennie owned two freighting lines, one carrying goods to California, the other up from Sonora. And his headquarters in the fertile Santa Cruz Valley ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... a chance that some of them—if the aim were true—might survive the fiery passage through the atmosphere and fall upon the surface of our planet where, perhaps, they would afterward be picked up by a prospector and lead him to believe that he ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss

... found the four boys on a highway leading from Columbina to Derrickville. They had fallen in with an old oil prospector who knew Nick Ogilvie well, and this prospector had offered to take them over to ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer

... black men. It consisted of ranges of hills heavily timbered, furrowed by deep valleys, through which flowed innumerable streams, winding their way to the river of the plains. Sometimes the solitary bushman or prospector, looking across a deep valley, saw, nestled amongst the opposite hills, a beautiful meadow of grass. But when he had crossed the intervening creek and scrubby valley, and continued his journey to the up-land, he found that the deceitful meadow was only a barren plain, covered, not with ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... said, "did you ever hear about that prospector that found a thousand pounds of gold in one chunk? He was lost on the desert, plumb out of water and forty miles from nowhere. He couldn't take the chunk along with him and if he left it there the sand would cover it up. Now what was ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... to lead to the store and monte. Small as was the garrison, and few as were the neighboring ranches, there was generally business enough to support two card rooms, one for officers and the "gente fino"—the trader, his partner, the chief packer, forage master, and an occasional rancher or prospector; the other, a big one, and often a riotous, for the soldiery, scouts, packers and riffraff of the frontier, and for this establishment Bennett's dago had an indescribable fascination. Here he had met and differed with Munoz, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... hunting as a business in the United States is past probably, by preserving such heads, horns, feet and skins as come in his way the trapper, prospector and settler can often add considerably to his income. For instance, from one to five deer may be legally killed in different states. If two good heads are taken, worth say $15.00 and $20.00 each when prepared, that ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham

... clothes, but he had put on an American dinner-jacket. He and his comrade were strangely agile; their movements were quick, their step was light, like a cat's, and she noted how they lifted their feet. She did not know the prospector gets the habit by walking through tangled bush and across rough stones. They had a suppleness that came from using the long ax, and toil in the wilds had given them a fine-drawn look. In some ways both were modern, but in some they ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss

... finds were nearly always from three to a dozen feet under the surface, and when a prospector found signs in surface panning he knew there was rich dirt below. Well find our gold in this ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood

... profitable to explore Hampstead, Clapham Common, Blackheath, Ealing and other rich and fashionable suburbs. A number of hopeful ladies and gentlemen having been located in these parts, the Company went ahead rapidly, and in 1907 a new prospector was sent out to replace the one who was assumed to have ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... Gordon succeeded in capturing a big, rawboned white horse with a gift of astonishing speed. Riding horses were at a premium, for distances between wells were something to be reckoned with, and those who did not own a car had to depend on horses. Bob even saw one enthusiastic prospector mounted on ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson

... stories she had deemed impossible! Because she and her people and friends had appeared secure in their mountain camp and happy in their work and trustful of good, they had scarcely credited the rumors of just such things as had happened to her. The stage held up by roadagents, a lonely prospector murdered and robbed, fights in the saloons and on the trails, and useless pursuit of hardriding men out there on the border, elusive as Arabs, swift as Apaches—these facts had been terrible enough, without the dread of worse. The truth of her capture, the meaning of it, were raw, shocking spurs ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... himself with his own conversation and scolding amiably at his saddle and pack horses, the youthful prospector slid for another hour down the mountain trail, though, as a rock would fall, the log house of the French Canadian was not more than ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... was another saucer report. which received very little notice. A Portland prospector named Fred Johnson, who was working up in the Cascade Mountains, spotted five or six disks banking in the sun. He watched them through his telescope several seconds. then he suddenly noticed that ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... of a practical engineer—one M. Marie; and some artists, and a number of Egyptian officers and Soudanese soldiers accompanied the expedition. The party included neither metallurgist nor practical prospector [306] but Burton carried a divining rod, and seems really to have believed that it would be a help. The expenses, it was ascertained, would amount to one thousand nine hundred and seventy-one pounds twelve shillings ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright



Words linked to "Prospector" :   prospect, miner, mineworker, sourdough



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