diggings

A word first used at the Western lead mines, to denote places where the ore was dug. Instead of saying this or that mine, it is these diggings, or those diggings. The phrase these diggings is now provincial in the Western States, and is occasionally heard in the Eastern, to denote a neighborhood, or particular section of country.

Mr. Charles F. Hoffman visited the Galena lead mines, and while there was shown about to the various estates, where the people were digging for ore. The person who accompanied him said:

Mr.----, from your State, has lately struck a lead, and a few years will make him independent. We are now, you observe, among his diggings.--Winter in the West, Let. 25.

Boys, fellars, and candidates, I am the first white man ever seed in these diggins. I killed the first bar [bear] ever a white skinned in the county, and am the first manufacturer of whisky, and a powerful mixture it is too.--Robb, Squatter Life.

He can shoot the closest of any chap, young or old, in these 'are diggins.--Carlton, The New Purchase, Vol. I. p. 155.

I ain't a vain man, and never was. I hante a morsel of it in my composition. I don't think any of us Yankees is vain people; it's a thing don't grow in our diggins.--Sam Slick in England, ch. 24.

Guess they don't often see such an apostle in these diggins.--Ibid.