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Digging up   /dˈɪgɪŋ əp/   Listen
Digging up

noun
1.
The act of digging something out of the ground (especially a corpse) where it has been buried.  Synonyms: disinterment, exhumation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Digging up" Quotes from Famous Books



... (a propos of nothing), "Too much eleele (soil) for me!" The cacao (you must understand) has to be planted at first in baskets of plaited cocoa-leaf. From four to ten natives were plaiting these in the wood-shed. Four boys were digging up soil and bringing it by the boxful to the verandah. Lloyd and I and Belle, and sometimes S. (who came to bear a hand), were filling the baskets, removing stones and lumps of clay; Austin and Faauma carried them when full ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... feet to the north-east," or north-west; I am not certain which. When he saw the date at which they came to the camp, and the date at which they left, he said at once, "They have left here to-day. If they had shifted to any other part of the creek, they would not have marked this." We set to work digging up the plant. We did not know where they had gone to, but thought they had left some instructions. Mr. Burke was too much excited to do anything, and Mr. Wills and myself dug up the plant. I got the bottle there ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... passed away, during which Ready repaired the boat, and William and Mr. Seagrave were employed in digging up the garden. It was also a very busy week at the house, as they had not washed linen for some time. Mrs. Seagrave and Juno, and even little Caroline were hard at work, and Tommy was more useful than ever he had ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat

... caused by a consumption of any part of it, at a time when the whole of the common life and vigour was required for its reproduction and multiplication. This idea may have operated to enable the savage to restrain himself from digging up and eating the grain sown in the ground, or slaughtering his domestic animals for food, and a taboo on the consumption of grain and fruits during their period of ripening may have first begun in their wild state. The Intichiuma ceremonies of the Australian natives are ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... what sort of people they might be, whether friends or foes, I thought it not safe to be seen. I got up into a very thick tree, from whence I might safely view them. The vessel came into a little creek, where ten slaves landed, carrying a spade and other instruments for digging up the ground. They went towards the middle of the island, where I saw them stop, and dig for a considerable time, after which I thought I perceived them lift up a trap door. They returned again to the vessel, and unloaded several sorts of provisions and furniture, which they carried to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... though I had a five miles drive it was through this exquisite air on a calm, lovely evening, and by the time we got to a spot on the Downs where a little Pinewood breaks the expanse of the plains, the good-humoured driver and I were both on our knees on the grass digging up plots of the exquisite Shepherd's Thyme, which carpets ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... abandons his native forest and to have a dead one for the purpose would be next to impossible, as he who attempted to carry away a corpse would expose himself to serious danger, there being no greater sacrilege, according to the idea of these bushmen, than that of touching a dead body or of digging up the ground where a ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... suggesting a compromise between sturgeon and catfish, he has a long, perfectly straight duck bill, and so seems to be always shoving ahead of him a good broad paper knife nine or ten inches long. This weapon is used for digging up the bed of the river, but if it could be insinuated out of the water into a drowsy angler's leg it would probably make him sit up. As the paddle is as long as the fish the creature presents a really farcical appearance. The species runs to a hundredweight, ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... the hill into what was little more than a wide ravine, where a number of rudely built log houses and dirty-looking tents lay scattered along the sides and the bottom of the declivity and men could be seen at work with picks and shovels, digging up the hard stony ground, or, with gold-pans in their hands, washing the dirt thus dug in the waters of the little creek that flowed through the bottom of ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil

... the childless man, would be to own his share in Nora's gifted son, if in doing so he could avoid digging up the old, cruel reproach, the old, forgotten scandal! How proud to hail Ishmael Worth ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... resemble the human form. (Both the Chinese name Schin-sen, and Garan-toguen, the Indian one, are said to mean like a man. Here is an interesting clue for the ethnologists to follow !) Imperial edict prohibited the Chinese from digging up their native plant lest it be exterminated. So Jesuit missionaries, who discovered our similar ginseng, were not slow in exporting it to China when it was literally worth its weight in gold. Indeed, it is always sold by weight - a fact on which the heathen Chinee "with ways that are dark ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... that time, and the earth was hard and dry. Now just when the Raja and Rani had lived in Raja Nal's palace for four and a half years Mahadeo was walking through Raja Harichand's country. He saw the farmers digging up the ground, and said, "What is the good of your digging and turning up the ground? Not a drop of rain is going to fall." "No," said the farmers, "but if we did not go on ploughing and digging, we should forget how ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous

... sir, I've used it in joy and grief, For digging up many a tater, Or opening bully beef. I have used it for breaking wire, Making tents 'gainst rain and sun; I have used it as a hoof-pick, In a hundred ways ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross

... the port of Salem, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. I remember to have read (probably in Felt's Annals) a notice of the decease of Mr. Surveyor Pue, about fourscore years ago; and likewise, in a newspaper of recent times, an account of the digging up of his remains in the little graveyard of St. Peter's Church, during the renewal of that edifice. Nothing, if I rightly call to mind, was left of my respected predecessor, save an imperfect skeleton, and some fragments of apparel, and a wig of majestic frizzle; which, unlike ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... This is an occasion peculiarly meet for the digging up of pleasant reminiscences concerning literary folk, therefore I will drop lightly into history myself. Standing here on the shore of the Atlantic, and contemplating certain of its largest literary billows, I am reminded ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... certain savage tribes, the victims of constant scarcity, that they swallow little balls of clay in order to keep down their hunger; and during the great famines in India the distracted inhabitants may, we are told, be seen digging up the banks of the rivers to feed on the fertile clay in which the splendid vegetation of their country is developed. This is a desperate trial of that primeval system of alimentation which answers perfectly with the worm, ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... sides the boundaries which they had considered sacred. They saw pioneers, as bold as they were thoughtless, marching through the mists of a glorious hope towards an unknown future, attacking errors and abuses, all the while that they were digging up the groundwork of society in order to lay new foundations, and they must have shuddered even in their everlasting rest to see ideas taking the place of creeds, doubt substituted for belief, generous aspirations after liberty, justice, and humanity mingled, amongst the masses, with low passions ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... he bought the land; and in two days more he had a big force of men hacking away at the chapparal, burning it, digging up the tough, tangled roots; oh, what slow work it was! Just as soon as a big enough place was cleared, he built a little house of rough boards,—only two rooms in it; and there he went ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson

... said 'Bias, perpending and digging up the roadway with the point of his stick. "'Tis to be her own prize, ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... some feller to help him shoot.' The consequence of this energy was, that the persecuted devil's-canaries flew away to other farms where powder was scarce-first and foremost descending in flocks on Brother Hornblower's lands, and digging up his young corn—it was in the month of May—until even he found cause to go at these birds as don't spin; for he found out that they toiled most laboriously. Being a man of peaceful disposition, and opposed to the use of fire-arms, he thought over a plan by which fire-logs ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... sick. She, whose very art was that of pretending, hated pretense, affectation, "coy stuff." This was, perhaps, unfortunate. Your Fatigued Financier prefers the comedy form in which a spade is not only called a spade but a slab of iron for digging up dirt. Harrietta never even pretended to have a cough on an opening night so that the critics, should the play prove a failure, might say: "Harrietta Fuller, though handicapped by a severe cold, still gave her usual brilliant and finished performance in a part not ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... natives who travel much about, or go into badly watered districts. I have seen these skins (lukomb) capable of holding from two to three gallons of water: the fur is always inside. The karko is a small spade of wood, used by the natives north of Adelaide for digging up grubs from the ground. The canoe or "mun" is a large sheet of bark cut from the gum-tree, carefully lowered to the ground, and then heated with fire until it becomes soft and pliable, and can be moulded into ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... the work. After school hours one always finds in the shops a certain number of the teachers from the Academic Department looking up problems for their classes for the next day. A physics teacher may be found in the blacksmithing shop digging up problems about the tractive strength of wires and the expansion and contraction of metals under heat and cold. A teacher of chemistry may be found in the kitchen of the cooking school unearthing problems relating to the chemistry of food for her class the next day. If, on the ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... vide antea, p. 64, and of its preservation through the winter. The Pilgrims, in 1620, found it deposited by the Indians in the ground after the manner described in the text. Bradford says they found "heaps of sand newly padled with their hands, which they, digging up, found in them diverce faire Indean baskets filled with corne, and some in eares, faire and good, of diverce collours, which seemed to them a very goodly sight, haveing never seen any such before:"—His. Plym. Plantation, p. 82. Squanto taught the English how to "set it, and ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain

... during his absence. One day during his absence all hands vacated our desks and proceeded to the vegetable garden, which contained a good assortment of all kinds, and as boys are known to be over-fond of raw carrots and turnips, especially if stolen, we were soon at work digging up our favorite vegetables. After peeling them with our jackknives we might have been seen sitting on the fence and school porch eating as only boys can eat. In the midst of our vegetarian feast the lookout announced the distant approach of the master, ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... performed an international service equal in importance to one performed during his consulship, for which he has recently received the cross of the Legion of Honor. In laying out their new concession at Shanghai, the French had excited the hostility of the people by digging up and levelling down many of those graves that occupied so much space outside of the city walls, and where the Chinese who worshipped their ancestors were to be seen every day burning paper and heaping up the earth. A furious mob fell on the French police, chased them from the field, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... digging up the soil by hundreds, trotted towards these girls yet breathing heavily from the speed with which they had run, and looking up in their faces, grunted and squeaked without any apparent cause; and some ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... suppose they were,' said Jasper. 'At least the giants, and that they handed on some of their ability through Ham, to the Egyptians, and all those queer primeval coons, whose works we are digging up.' ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... grossest folly, cruelty, and poltroonery. If any other profession in the world had been stained by those vices and by false witness, forgery, swindling, torture, compulsion of men's families to attend their executions, digging up and mutilation of dead enemies, all of which is only added to the devastation proper to its own business, as the military profession has been within recent memory in England, France, and the United States of America (to mention ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... but the fachada of the church remains, and that has recently been braced or it would have fallen. There are a few portions of walls also, and a large part of the adobe wall around the garden remains. The present owner of the orchard, in digging up some of the old olive trees, has found a number of interesting relics, stirrups, a gun-barrel, hollow iron cannon-balls, metates, etc. These are all preserved and shown as "curios," together with beams from the ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... durable and is valuable for lumber, fence posts and firewood. On the dry mesas it seems to go mostly to root that is out of all proportion to the size of the tree. The amount of firewood that is sometimes obtained by digging up the root of a small mesquite ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... Mariona, as in most other places, and it was something to have one of the species, of an accommodating turn, and very presentable, within telephone range. Mrs. Carr was grateful, and so, it must be said, was her husband, who did not care to spend his evenings digging up Egyptians that had been a long time dead, or listening to comic operas. It was through Mrs. Carr that Leighton came to be well known in Mariona; she told her friends to ask him to call, and there were now many homes besides ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... not driven my neighbor from his balcony. He is digging up the earth in his green boxes, and carefully sowing the seeds of the scarlet nasturtium, convolvulus, and sweet-pea. Henceforth he will come every day to watch for their first sprouting, to protect the young shoots from weeds or insects, to arrange the strings for the tendrils to climb on, and carefully ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... all down at the bungalow! I'm going there. Men are digging up the cellar. Mrs. Ocumpaugh says she's afraid Miss Gwendolen's body ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green

... in 1694, records the tradition that the poet himself composed the lines in a style calculated to impress sextons and prevent them from digging up his bones and throwing them into the adjacent charnel house. However this may be, the grave ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... any bets—thought of everything, even to saddle-blankets and water-bags already full," contributed Farrar, digging up these supplies from ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine

... loafing around here, digging up our whole driveway, unless there was," persisted Paul good-humoredly. "Come, out with it! You're the darndest kid for getting into messes. What's happened ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett

... When they leave the nest they go in procession, following each other with great precision. On the summits of the Maures, and on all the mountains bordering the Riviera, grows the heath Erica arborea, from whose roots pipes are made. The digging up and the preparing of these roots for the Paris manufacturers form now an important industry in the mountain villages. In England they are called briar-root pipes, briar being a corruption of the ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... little farm in Campania, which he had cultivated by a laborer. As he was busy digging up the ground, he discovered a round vase, in which were the ashes of a dead man; directly, a spectre appeared to him, who commanded him to put this vase back again in the ground, with what it contained, or if he ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... means which reason offers for their relief. The first thing I proposed to myself was, to throw down my enclosures, and turn all my tame cattle wild into the woods, lest the enemy should find them, and then frequent the island in prospect of the same or the like booty: then the simple thing of digging up my two corn-fields, lest they should find such a grain there, and still be prompted to frequent the island: then to demolish my bower and tent, that they might not see any vestiges of habitation, and be prompted to look farther, in order to find out the ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... dollars,' says Pendergast digging up two Chili silver wheels and handing 'em to me. 'Go, my men, and observe the rest of the day ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... set my teeth, and climbed over the gate. I walked fast and kept my eyes straight before me. If I looked on either side, sure as life I would see something I never had before, and be down digging up a strange flower, chasing a butterfly, or watching a bird. Besides, if I didn't look in the fence corners that I passed, maybe I wouldn't see anything to scare me. I was going along finely, and feeling better every minute as I went down the bank of an old creek ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... mine," continued Michael, "for the inspector of police to play on while his men are digging up ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... share of the work about our little farm, with your dear brother George. Poor fellow! he has so much to do, and does so much, that I fear he will overwork himself. He is at this present time out in the little field, opposite my window, digging up the docks, which are very hard to conquer; he has made a brave large heap of them, but I wish to my heart he would not toil ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... her to himself! Traitor! He satisfied their curiosity briefly. He happened to know Judge Trent, who was her trustee. His acquaintance with the lady was only a week old. Well, he hadn't thought to mention it to such friends as he had happened to meet. Been too busy digging up matter for that infernal column. Yes, he thought he could manage to introduce them to her later. She had brought no letters and as she was a Virginian by birth and had gone abroad in her childhood and married a foreigner as soon as she grew up she knew practically no one in New York and didn't ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... of "Emendations" interests Mr. Bayne more than it does us, and we decidedly disagree with him in his general apology for the digging up of early writings which the writers may be presumed to wish kept dark. The alteration in the words of Iphigenia in the "Dream of Fair Women" is not as good as it might be, and Mr. Bayne most justly condemns "the bright death," but it is quite clear that the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... is, above all others, addicted to the digging up of boundary ditches, removing the limits, transgressing landmarks, and extending their territory by every possible means. So great is their disposition towards this common violence, that they scruple not to claim as their hereditary right, those lands ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis

... terror of eternity. Well—would you believe it?—a week ago, at Lady Hampshire's, I found myself seated at dinner next the lady in question, and she insisted on going over the whole thing again, and digging up the past, and raking up the future. I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel. She dragged it out again, and assured me that I had spoiled her life. I am bound to state that she ate an enormous dinner, so I did not feel any anxiety. But what a lack ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... once; so, feeling that I was responsible for the success of the celery plants, I was on my way to the bottom garden by the pond, thinking of the encounter I had when I was busy watering there that day, when, as I turned down one of the alleys of the garden, I saw a man in the distance digging up a piece of ground with a broad spade, and turning over the soil in that easy regular way, levelling it as he ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... settlers reached home and found amusement and some little excitement in the digging up of their household treasures and putting things in place once more, the thought of leaving this home in the Far West obtruded itself rather unpleasantly on the minds of all of them, although nobody spoke of what each thought. Oscar had hidden ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks

... spoke against the pope himself. He translated the Bible into English, attacked many of the prevailing superstitions, and although condemned as holding heretical opinions, he yet died in peace, A.D. 1387. Rome revenged itself by digging up his bones and burning them, about thirteen years later. Rebellion spread even among the monks of the Church, and a vast number of some nonconformist Franciscan monks, termed Spirituals, were burned for their refusal to obey ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... mingled with contempt appears in Josiah's scattering the 'dust' of the images on the graves of their worshippers, as if he said: 'There you lie together, pounded idols and dead worshippers, neither able to help the other!' The same feelings prompted digging up the skeletons of priests and burning the bones on the very altars that they had served, thus defiling the altars and executing judgment on the priests. No doubt there were much violence and a strong ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... ready to put up their money if they supposed the judge were going to get it. All you need is some unscrupulous fellow to go up to one of our clients and mention the fact that he is the judge's brother-in-law and is in dearth of ready money. Can't you see the client digging up the needful? He'd be stuffing it down our friend's pockets before he got through speaking; and the whole thing could be done quite openly, you observe, because, even if the client found out later that he had made a mistake, the law would ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... Club, all of the highest aristocracy, used to run about London during the hours when the citizens were asleep, pulling the hinges from the shutters, cutting off the pipes of pumps, filling up cisterns, digging up cultivated plots of ground, putting out lamps, sawing through the beams which supported houses, breaking the window panes, especially in the poor quarters of the town. It was the rich who acted thus towards the poor. For this reason no complaint was possible. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... some perfectly truthful specimens, recently delivered here on the occasion of a surgeon from the fort digging up the body of an Indian woman for dissection. They expressed plain truth without eloquence, and I never heard anything ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... parasol procession, which the temporary deluge had seriously disorganised; and, but that several solemn-looking blackbirds, of a larger species than the yellow-billed variety familiar to us in England, were now hopping about on the lawn under the orange-trees, digging up worms, and that a stray drop or two of crystal glittered on the petals of the roses like diamonds, or reflected the sunshine from the trumpet bells of the lilies, while there was a greener tint on the vegetation around, one could hardly have imagined ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... of the arrival of the lady's answer, he was sitting at dinner, when his gardener came in and presented him with his mother's wedding ring, which she had lost many years before, and which the gardener had just found in digging up the mould under her window. Almost at the same moment, the letter from Miss Milbanke arrived; and Lord Byron exclaimed, "If it contains a consent, I will be married with this very ring." It did contain a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... forgot that they had meant to leave his dead body in the desert, though they still told him he would be killed at the Jowf. For three days they travelled on without finding any water, and even on the fourth day they only found it by digging up the sand with their fingers till they had made a hole over six feet deep where ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews

... troops soon disposed of them, and then turned their attention to the cabbages and potatoes in the garden, with the intention, no doubt, of dining that day on fresh pork and fresh vegetables instead of on salt junk and hard bread, which formed their regular diet on the march. In digging up the potatoes some one discovered half a keg of powder, which had been buried in the garden by the good father to prevent the hostile Indians from getting it to use against the whites. As soon as this was unearthed wild excitement ensued, ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... her away at last, and she went, muttering something about digging up the cellar floor and finding an uneasy spirit. Then I ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... After digging up our supply of preserved meats yesterday we had made rather more free with them than was prudent in men who had been for so long a time compelled to subsist upon very scanty fare, and in consequence had been nearly all affected with violent ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... this Welton difficulty," said he. "Frank Taylor has our own matters well in hand. The opposition won't gain much by digging up that old charge against the integrity of our land titles. We'll count that ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... time to time suddenly rushes out, seizes children and other defenceless people, strangles, and devours them. Occasionally, for want of other food, this detested race will resort to churchyards, and, digging up the bodies of the newly-buried, gorge their appetites upon the flesh of these. The husband followed his wife and her supernatural companion, and watched their proceedings. He saw them digging in a new-made grave. They extracted the body of the deceased; and, the Goule cutting it up joint ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... wove the cloth on regular looms which were made into dresses for the slaves. For various colors of cloth the thread was dyed. The dye was made by digging up red shank and wild indigo roots which were boiled. The substance obtained being some of the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... "if there are any Roman ghosts about, I shouldn't think they'd like to see us digging up ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... Prince of India deceived me." He grew more serious. "A marvellous man! I cannot make him out. The more I do with him the more incomprehensible he becomes. The long past is familiar to him as the present to me. He is continually digging up things ages old, and amazing me with them. Several times I have asked him when he was born, and he has always made the same reply: 'I will tell when you are Lord of Constantinople.' ... How he hates Christ and the Christians! ... This is indeed ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... inquiring why they had fled on my approach to Linyanti, they let me know that they had a vivid idea of the customs of English cruisers on the coast. They showed also their habits in their own country by digging up and eating, even here where large game abounds, the mice and moles which infest the country. The half-castes, or native Portuguese, could all read and write, and the head of the party, if not a real Portuguese, had European ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... helpless by nature, and whose profession required a more than common wariness—this girl he was proposing to set quite adrift again by cutting through the single slender rope which tethered her. It was like digging up a little rose-tree planted with one's own hands in some poor shelter, just when it had taken root, and setting it where the full winds would beat against it. To do so brusque and, as it seemed to Hilary, so inhumane a thing was foreign to his nature. There ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... leaned against low things and looked up at it while he smoked another cigarette. It struck him as a great pity such a pile should be touched: so much of the past was buried there that it was like desecrating, like digging up a grave. Since the years were letting it down so gently why jostle the elbow of slow-fingering time? The fading afternoon was exquisitely pure; the place was empty; he heard nothing but the cries of several children, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... public assembly, to excite the people to innovations and changes in the government, he resolved to publish it, as an evidence of Lysander's practices. But one of the Elders having the perusal of it, and finding it powerfully written, advised him to have a care of digging up Lysander again, and rather bury that oration in the grave with him; and this advice he wisely hearkened to, and hushed the whole thing up; and ever after forbore publicly to affront any of his adversaries, but took occasions of picking out the ringleaders, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... us know; but Mr. Crow said he had nothing whatever to do with it. He don't like Mr. Towser Dog, on account of some trouble the two of them had about Mr. Crow's digging up the corn just after Mr. Man had planted it. Hello! there comes Mr. Donkey, and now you may be sure Teddy Boy won't worry Mrs. Cow's baby for quite ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice

... to the second volume should be the dustyard with the three mounds, and Mr. Boffin digging up the Dutch bottle, and Venus restraining Wegg's ardour to get at him. Or Mr. Boffin might be coming down with the bottle, and Venus might be dragging Wegg out ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... priest of Marseilles, Peter Bartholomew, came and announced to the chiefs that St. Andrew had thrice appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Go into the church of my brother Peter at Antioch; and hard by the high altar thou wilt find, on digging up the ground, the head of the spear which pierced our Redeemer's side. That, carried in front of the army, will bring about the deliverance of the Christians." The appointed search was solemnly conducted under the eye of twelve reputable witnesses, priests and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... among other things a piece of iron hoop was found fixed in a wooden handle, which it seemed they had used for the purpose of digging up roots. This hoop must have been left by us last year at Careening Bay. But what chiefly attracted our attention was a small bundle of bark, tied up with more than usual care; upon opening it we found it contained several ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... class. A—a little cast in one of them, but all to the good, Mae. Nice clean little—girl, fifteen thou with her, and her old man half owner in the Weeko Woolen Mills. I—I need the money, Mae. The customs is digging up dirt again. It ain't like I 'ain't been on the level with you, girl. You knew it had to come sooner or later. Now, didn't you, Mae? Now ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... tumbling and slipping down, turning over and over, sideways and endways, until she caught herself by spreading out all four legs. In this way she came with each step and turn nearer and nearer. Finally she reached an open patch on the hillside, where she began to feed, digging up the roots of the salmon-berry bushes at the edge of the snow. If now I lost sight of her for a short time, it was very difficult to pick her up again even with the glasses, so perfectly did the light tawny yellows and browns of her coat blend in with the ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... my wife used to laugh at me for digging up the seed to see if it had sprouted, so impatient was I to see ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell

... abnormal manifestations of the sexual impulse which may be practiced merely faute de mieux and not as, in the strict sense, perversions of the impulse. Even necrophily may be thus practiced. A young man who when assisting the grave-digger conceived and carried out the idea of digging up the bodies of young girls to satisfy his passions with, and whose case has been recorded by Belletrud and Mercier, said: "I could find no young girl who would agree to yield to my desires; that is why I have done this. I should have preferred to have relations with living persons. I found it ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... daughter to him, I know it, he told me. I was his adopted son. I tried to repay him for his interest in a young, unknown poet and composer—well, I compose a bit, you know—and I feel that I pleased him in my libretto of 'The Iron Virgin.' You remember the summer I spent at Nuremberg digging up the old legend, and the numberless times I visited the torture chamber where stands the real Iron Virgin, her interior studded with horrid spikes that cruelly stabbed the wretches consigned to her diabolical embraces? You recall all this?" he went on, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... digging up your bones, Tom Paine, Will. Cobbett[112] has done well: You visit him on Earth again, He'll visit you ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... miles along the lake, adorning it with a palace, a forum, a race-course, and a large synagogue. But to strict Jews the place was unclean, because it was defiled with Roman idols, and because its builders had polluted themselves by digging up the bones of the dead. Herod could get few Jews to live in his city, and it became a catch-all for the off-scourings of the land, people of all creeds and none, aliens, mongrels, soldiers of fortune, and citizens of the high-road. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... length with his exertions, he dismounted, and leading Rakush to a green spot near a limpid fountain or rivulet of spring water, allowed him to graze, and then went to sleep. Akwan Diw seeing from a distance that Rustem had fallen asleep, rushed towards him like a whirlwind, and rapidly digging up the ground on every side of him, took up the plot of ground and the champion together, placed them upon his head, and walked away with them. Rustem being awakened with the motion, he was thus ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... way everybody and everything have grown and spread out since the Northern Pacific Railroad has been running cars through Helena is most amazing. It was so recently a mining town, just "Last Chance Gulch," where Chinamen were digging up the streets for gold, almost undermining the few little buildings, and Chinamen also were raising delicious celery, where now stand very handsome houses. Now Main street has many pretentious shops, and pretty residences ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... security, and resolved in my mind many different schemes for that purpose. I first proposed to cut down my inclosures; and turn my tame cattle wild into the woods that the enemy might not find them, and frequent the island in hopes of killing the same. Secondly, I was for digging up my corn fields for the very same reason. An, lastly, I concluded to demolish my bower, lest, seeing a place of human contrivance, they might come farther and find out and attack me ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... preparations for war, or to defend his people against the Lamanites; for he caused that his armies should commence in the commencement of the twentieth year of the reign of the judges, that they should commence in digging up heaps of earth round about all the cities, throughout all the land which was possessed ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... actually he received quite an affectionate and pleased letter from his father, he did, for a while, feel a little proud. The letter enclosed a cutting from the local paper recording his success, and digging up for the benefit of its readers an account of his adventure on the Alps. Also, it mentioned prominently that he was the son of the Rev. Mr. Knight, the incumbent of Monk's Abbey, and had received his education in that gentleman's establishment; so prominently, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... Montezuma. It was here that the Spaniards were quartered when they took Montezuma prisoner, and here Cortes found and appropriated the treasures of that family. In 1830 a bust of stone was found in the yard of the convent, which the workmen were digging up. Don Lucas Alaman, then Minister of Exterior Relations, offered a compensation to the nuns for the curious piece of antiquity which they gladly gave up to the government, on whose account he acted. It is said to be the idol ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... her prophet was too wise to attempt in any way to quicken the work which was going on within her; he was one of those rare men who can be, even in such a case, content to wait. He would as soon have thought of digging up a seed to see whether he could not quicken its slow development of root and stem as of interfering in any way with Erica. He came and went, taught her Greek, and always, day after day, week after week, month after month, however much pressed ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... we—or Edward—could make her get a grip on herself and control herself that would be like Mr. Emerson's digging up the daisies. It would be hard work and an awfully slow process. But if we also could fill her mind with thoughts about working for her children and trying to make other people happy and with making embroidery which she loves to do, why wouldn't it help? ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith

... No good can be done by digging up the dead past, but you shall hear all that I know of the story. At that time there were three parties in the country. One section, led by your father, resolved upon armed insurrection; another, composed of Royalists, determined that nothing should ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... tusks, placed over graves, are now allowed to decay, and the skulls, which the former Batoka stuck on poles to ornament their villages, not being renewed, now crumble into dust. Here the famine, of which we had heard, became apparent, Molele's people being employed in digging up the tsitla root out of the marshes, and cutting out the soft core of the young palm-trees, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... the Rendall children. The house always looks as if it had been stirred up with the pudding-stick, and Sally Rendall spends good half her time looking for things they have carted off. Tom and Anstice were digging up the path the day we called, and what do you suppose they had! The tablespoons. And I'll venture to say they were left ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... them within twenty miles of the island; for Philip knew his landmarks well. Again they landed, and all retired to rest, the Commandant dreaming of wealth and revenge; while it was arranging that the digging up of the treasure which he coveted should be the signal ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... or some other, write this also, to oblige the cities by flattery? What need had they then to employ fruitless labor in digging up the earth, to make tombs and erect monuments for posterity's sake, when they saw their glory consecrated in the most illustrious and greatest donaries? Pausanias, indeed, when he was aspiring to the tyranny, set up this inscription ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... hours afterward they did not seem to be doing anything but holding a council. We made good use of this time by digging up the ground inside the barricade, with our knives, and throwing the loose earth around and over the mules, and we soon had a very respectable fortification. We were not troubled any more that day, but during the night the cunning rascals tried to burn us out by setting fire to the prairie. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... the cause of our dilemma, they mounted the housetops and tore off the obstructing water-spouts; where these projections were too strong, they sawed them off close to the eaves. A crowd of men pushed the van from behind, and guided the oxen, while others assisted by digging up the large paving-stones that would have tilted it against the house-walls. In this manner we arrived without serious accident upon the bank of the river which ran through the town. There was an open space here which was crowded with women and girls, ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... gravedigger, while digging up the whitened bones of the ancient dead, had broken up with his pick-axe a mouldering coffin, and a head rolled to his feet It was of later date, for the lower jaw was still fastened to it and it had ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... gently along Oxford Street, in pursuit of their way to Soho Square, and met with little worthy of note or remark until they arrived near the end of Newman Street, where a number of workmen were digging up the earth for the purpose of making new-drains. The pathway was railed from the road by scaffolding poles strongly driven into the ground, and securely tied together to prevent interruption from the passengers.—Tom was remarking upon the hardihood and utility ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... beside his son as he led the mare to the spot where Scudamore perforce awaited his return. They found him stretched on the roadside, plucking handfuls of grass, and digging up the turf with his fingers, thus, and thus alone, betraying that he suffered. Mr. Heywood at first refrained from any offer of hospitality, believing he would be more inclined to accept it after he had proved the difficulty ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... hastily, both boys rolling over its head. They laughed and boasted to one another of the somersault they had turned, as they went up on to the high ground to look for blackberries. Thence they went to some birds' nests in the small firs, and last of all they set about their best game—digging up mice-nests. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... sitting in the library, supposed to be digging up old Bluebooks for Sir James, but, instead, he found himself lingering over a curious book of poems with a white cover and a black mask on the outside. ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson

... the older piggie boy was walking along, digging up nice sweet roots with his nose—for you know that is the way piggies dig—all of a sudden, I say, there was a growling noise in the bushes, and before the little pig boy could jump out of the way, or even call for his mamma or papa, a big black bear sprang ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis

... for all the variegated animals that are used in Manchurian agriculture, but fuel for the long Manchurian winters as well. I even find the peasants digging up the roots and stubble to be dried and burned ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... country, Bertrand," he said, looking me squarely in the eye. "I'm not going to ask you why you quit bank bookkeeping to come out here and swing a pick in a construction camp. Here in the tall hills we don't think much of digging up graves—the graves of any man's past. You've done well in every job we've tried you at, and that's all to ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... misdirection of his mind. He is one of the most ill-conditioned, spiteful, vindictive, and venomous writers in existence, and whatever honey was in his composition, has long since turned to gall.... Can it be possible [he adds, after digging up and quoting some of Jerrold's feeblest verse] that it never occurs to a wholesale dealer in slander and ridicule that he is liable to be assailed by the very weapons he useth ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... a small boy, my father watched me one day hoeing in my little garden. In reply to a question, I said I was digging up my potatoes to see if they were growing. He laughed, and returned, "When you are a man, you will find it unwise to dig up your potatoes every day to see if they are growing." Nor has the moral of his remark been lost on me. ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... one now to be considered—and what did I know about God's purposes? He refused to take my scruples into consideration, except such as concerned her. But, after a long argument, very painful, weak as we were and whispering in the dark, he yielded this much. If I were bent on digging up the dead, as he called it, it must be done in such a way as to leave her free. Free she was in law, and she must be given a chance to claim her freedom without talk or publicity. Absolute secrecy he demanded ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... that are supposed to have been built before Julius Caesar invaded Britain, and he's pop-eyed with joy as he thinks how he'll yank Fame by the tail when he gets on the ground and snapshots the affairs. Gee! I'm glad I haven't got a kink for digging up relics and dodging about places that went to smash thousands of years ago. A vice like that is more expensive than ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer

... mornings, as much as a pint of water. This has, however, been done, even on the south coast, where the dews are not so copious as on the north-west. The natives themselves are never at a loss for that indeed precious article, water. They sometimes procure it by digging up the lateral roots of the small gumtree, a dusty and fatiguing operation: they break them off in short bits, and set them up to drain into a piece of bark or a large shell. By tapping also the knotty excrescences ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... a child murdered by the Germans because it refused to salute. They said the feet had been cut off and the boy was left to bleed to death. Conceivably the story was true. We did not stop, for we could not carry the investigation to the point of digging up a fresh grave. ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green

... of the trunk; and a Wild Sow with her young had taken shelter in a hollow at its foot. The Cat resolved to destroy by her arts this chance-made colony. She climbed to the nest of the Eagle, and said: "Destruction is preparing for you, and for me too. The Wild Sow, whom you may see daily digging up the earth, wishes to uproot the oak, that she may, on its fall, seize our families as food." Then she crept down to the cave of the Sow and said: "Your children are in great danger; for as soon as you shall go out with your litter to find food, the Eagle is ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop

... informs me, the natives largely use the seed of a grass of about the size of canary-seed, which they boil in water. They eat also the roots of certain reeds, and every one has read of the Bushmen prowling about and digging up with a fire-hardened stake various roots. Similar facts with respect to the collection of seeds of wild grasses in other parts of the world could be given. (9/7. For instance in both North and South ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... nigh; and I have, moreover, seen you, which is a good sign; it tells me that the schatz is still here. I shall go to the best posada in the place, and live like a duke till I have an opportunity of digging up the schatz, when ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... suspected of murdering his guests with great secrecy and mystery, and no one could tell what he did with the bodies of the victims he was supposed to have murdered. A few years ago an old tree in the neighbourhood of the inn was blown down, and on digging up the roots a skeleton was found among them. People wondered how it could have been placed there, but at last a very old inhabitant told the story of the mysterious disappearance of the bodies of the late landlord's guests, and the mystery was at length accounted for. Whenever he slew a man ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... or sun-dried meat they had made was all consumed, they were driven to every desperate expedient that is known to the starving, such as the digging up of bulbs, the boiling of grass, twigs and leaves, the catching of lizards, and so forth. I believe that they actually ate caterpillars and earthworms. But after their last fire went out through the neglect of ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... volume of the latter, printed at Clapham, his native place. The two read the ancient poets together, and rattled through them at a pleasant rate, very different from that steady grubbing pace with which the Cistercians used to go over the classic ground, scenting out each word as they went, and digging up every root in the way. Pen never liked to halt, but made his tutor construe when he was at fault, and thus galloped through the Iliad and the Odyssey, the tragic playwriters, writers, and the charming wicked ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... laughed. "But my husband spends his life in digging up manuscripts which nobody wants." She was amused by Ridley's expression ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... solitude is not complete. On a warm autumn day, when the white-coated gospodarz is ploughing on the hill with a pair of horses, you can see his wife and a girl, both in red petticoats, digging up potatoes. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... to help Charlotte. But I wanted also, you see, to help you—by not digging up a past that I believed, with so much on top of it, solidly buried. I wanted, as I still want," she richly declared, "to help ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... Leila will have long skirts and—hoops, Billy. There will be no more coasting and no more snowballing or digging up ground-hogs." ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... lay, that was the day that Donn ('the Brown Bull') of Cualnge came into the land of Margine [1]to Sliab Culinn[1] and with him fifty heifers of the heifers [2]of Ulster;[2] and there he was pawing and digging up the earth in that place, [3]in the land of Margine, in Cualnge;[3] that is, he flung the turf over him with his heels. [4]While the hosts were marching over Mag Breg, Cuchulain in the meanwhile laid hands ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... digging up gold like potatoes we weren't the only ones. No, not by a lot. There never was a richer patch of alluvial, I believe, in any of the fields, and the quantity that was sent down in one year was a caution. Wasn't the cash scattered about then? Talk of money, it ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... pressing the released hand on her eyes and forehead. "You fairly make my head spin, doctor, digging up of old-time memories. But whatever was the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... play. Whyfor is he digging up two thousand for me? How does he know I won't cut my ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... 'What are you digging up my ivy for!' cried Selina, rushing forward so excitedly that Johnny tumbled over a grave with the force of the tug she gave his hand ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... Jack. You need a change from digging up ruins all the time—it must be frightfully lonely out there on the desert. I can't think ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... safety, ruffling her small person to twice its proper size, and flying in everybody's face that so much as looked towards her hopeful progeny. No lower estimate could have vindicated the indefatigable zeal with which she scratched, and her unscrupulousness in digging up the choicest flower or vegetable, for the sake of the fat earthworm at its root. Her nervous cluck, when the chicken happened to be hidden in the long grass or under the squash-leaves; her gentle croak of satisfaction, while sure ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... knife, and well pleased was he to show it to his young companions, many of whom had never before seen so polished a piece of iron. In his herb-gatherings for his mother, too, how useful it was to him in cutting through the tough stalks of some of the plants and in digging up the roots; and what fine things it enabled him to cut and carve for his mother,—new comb for her flax amongst other things, and a spoon to stir ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick

... shall have occasion to refer to its spread to the West and explain how the shark's role was transferred to the dog-fish in the Mediterranean. The dog-fish then assumed a terrestrial form and became simply the dog who plays such a strange part in the magical ceremony of digging up the mandrake. ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... the author had yet put forth; namely, the two powerful ballads of the Skeleton in Armor and the Wreck of the Hesperus. The former of these, written in the swift leaping meter of Drayton's Ode to the Cambro Britons on their Harp, was suggested by the digging up of a mail-clad skeleton at Fall River—a circumstance which the poet linked with the traditions about the Round Tower at Newport and gave to the whole the spirit of a Norse viking song of war and of the sea. The Wreck of the Hesperus ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... to the end of the Roman time in England. It is but little that is known of those five hundred years; but some remains of them are still found. Often, when labourers are digging up the ground, to make foundations for houses or churches, they light on rusty money that once belonged to the Romans. Fragments of plates from which they ate, of goblets from which they drank, and of pavement on ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens



Words linked to "Digging up" :   act, human action, disinterment, exhumation, human activity, deed



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