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In 1849, a young teacher named Daniel B. Woods left Philadelphia to make his fortune mining gold in California. He learned quickly that bone-deep exhaustion was a constant feature of mining camp life. After our days of labor, exhausted and faint, we retire—if this word may be applied to the simple act of lying down in our clothes—robbing our feet of their boots to make a pillow of them, and wrapping our blankets about us on a bed of pine boughs, or on the ground beneath the clear, bright stars of the night. Near morning there is always a change in the temperature, and several blankets become necessary. The feet and the hands of the novice in this business become blistered and lame, and the limbs are stiff. Besides all these causes of sickness, the anxieties and cares which wear away the life of so many men who leave their families to come to this land of gold, contribute in no small degree, to this same result. It may with truth be said, "the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint."Daniel B. Woods left California in November of 1850. He published Sixteen Months at the Gold Diggings in 1851. |
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below to hear radio segment.
