Every sea is as good as a pickaxe.
"The Frozen Pirate"
W. Clark Russell
In one little hollow, to the westward of our camp, it seemed possible for two men with a pickaxe and shovel to have continued it through, and so to have opened a new channel for the passage of the waters of the Narran swamp, into the dry country between it and the Barwan.
"Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia In Search of a Route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria (1848) by Lt. Col. Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell Kt. D.C.L. (1792-1855) Surveyor-General of New South Wales"
Thomas Mitchell
Then the man at the end of the line raised his pickaxe high above his head, and the next man did the same, and then the third man, and so on to the other end of the line.
"The Doers"
William John Hopkins