Life in the Mines.

Few gold rushers went to California intending to stay. Most hoped to become rich and return home to family and friends. Both those who came to stay and those who hoped to return found the mining camps to be lonely places. In some parts of the West there were more than a hundred men for every white woman, and children were nearly as scarce. A California author recorded a song that expressed the miners' loneliness:

Our friends all so kind we have left far behind,
Our wives and our little ones too,
And those who have not any little [ones] got
Have sweethearts or wives, most true.
We see the gold shine in the damp, cold mine;
It cheers and rejoices our eyes,
For with it we mean at home to be seen
'Neath our own native sun and skies...