Word: prospector
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Best character sketch is that of Shorty Harris, grouchy, restless, simple-minded prospector who tramped Death Valley for 50 years, found five rich mines, got almost nothing for them. When he found The Bullfrog in 1904 a saloon keeper kept him drunk for three weeks, got him to sell his claim for $1,000 and three barrels of whiskey. When he found The Harrisburg soon after he became a partner in the company formed to work it, taking stock which he did not know was assessable. Author Coolidge hired Shorty Harris to guide him across the Valley to Death Valley...
When he died he left instructions to be buried near a famed Death Valley pioneer, with this epitaph: "Here Lies Shorty Harris, A Single Blanket Jackass Prospector." The Author- Unlike most authors of Western stories, Dane Coolidge knows the region he has written of in such romances as Snake Bit Jones, Rawhide Johnny, Gun Smoke, some 30 other books. Born in Natick, Mass, in 1873, he was taken to California in 1877, entered Stanford at the age of 21, with a job as field collector working on mammals and reptiles. Since then he has collected live animals...
...Burns Lake, B. C.'s hospital last week, suffering from broken leg and exposure, Prospector Arthur Gammon told how a little black bear had saved his life. Injured by a falling tree, Prospector Gammon had started to crawl to his cabin two miles away, been overtaken by a snow-storm after six days. He inched into a cave, found a bear inside. The bear did not budge. When he resumed his crawl, the bear went with him. One day he fainted, came to to find the bear holding off an encircling pack of coyotes. Still standing guard, the bear...
...Senator, James Pinckney Pope, told how his employer had lately been passing through a small Idaho mining town, had seen two storekeeper brothers fistfighting, stopped them with a "burst of eloquence." Their argument was over whether to accept 50,000 shares of new mining stock from a gold prospector in payment of his $1,000 grocery bill. Last week Senator Pope learned that the brothers had taken the slock, had sold...
...picturesque gaffer, who traveled for years about California in a cart drawn by three burros, 74-year-old Peter Voiss supplemented the meagre income he made from prospecting by posing for snapshots. Two months ago, when Dentist Jasper Gattuccio refused to pay for taking a picture, Prospector Voiss shot him dead (TIME, May 11). On trial for murder last week, the whiskery oldster sat calmly in a San José. Calif, court while his attorney argued: "Dr. Gattuccio brought about his own death by stealing an old man's living for his own amusement. . . . The only home...