Lyr. Add: THE NATIONAL MINER
John A. Stone
Air: Massa's in de Cold Ground (Foster)

When gold was first discovered,
At Coloma, near the mill,
All the world first endeavored
To get here, and they keep a coming still;
When our war was through with Mexico,
And we paid them for the land,
Those who had fought at Palo Alto
Were driven off by nations they had tanned.

Chorus:
Down in the deep ravines,
Hear the roaring sound,
There the miners are digging,
Digging in the cold, damp ground.

When our glorious Yankee nationSent her warships to the coast,
They left the mines for all creation-
Now, tell me, who is benefited most?
Here we're working like a swarm of bees,
Scarcely making enough to live,
And two hundred thousand Chinese
Are taking home the gold we ought to have.

Here they make their Queen Victoria laws,
In spite of simple Uncle Sam,
And jump our diggings, say they'll break our jaws-
Our government, they say, ain't worth a damn.
When I make enough to take me home,
I'll leave the mines well-satisfied,
I'll give old Johnny Bull my long-tom,
To prospect where it never had been tried.

John A, Stone, 1955, The Original California Songster, reproduced, with the music, in Dwyer and Lingenfelter, 1965, pp. 87-88.
The first verse and chorus only were posted in thread 6228.

A large numbero f Chinese (a few thousand?- but by no means the number cited by Stone) joined in the diggings. They were often set upon and robbed and beaten. Gold seekers came from all over. Chileans, including recent emigrants to that country, were prominent in the diggings; their tent city was attacked by former soldiers.
Slaves and Negroes were forbidden to the gold fields by a mass meeting of miners after a U. S. Army colonel, Thomas Jefferson Green, used them to dig on his behalf.
Arguments with Britain over the Oregon boundary and efforts of British diggers towards setting rules, appear in verse three.