Bill Staines - The Miner's Song

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When first unto this country, a stranger I came,
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Pick and shovel on my back, no money to my name
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No money to my name

I landed in old Juneau, Sattle far behind,
I boated 'cross the channel where I worked the Treadwell mine
I worked the Tredwell mine

Well, it was hard times in the open pit, eighteen hundred down,
One day you'd make to dollars and he next you're glory bound,
The next you're glory bound.

So I dodged the rocks from the sudden slides, and I swam out of the flood,
In the rain and cold we dug for gold through the water and the mud,
Through the water and the mud.

There's coler in the eagle's eye and in the sun at the break of day
But there ain't no color I could find to keep me on that pay,
To keep me on that pay

So it was strait way through the wilderness to Farbanks up the line,
And down the frozen Yukon in the year of ninety-nine,
In the year of ninety-nine

Now there's twenty thoussand of us here out on the beach at Nome,
And there ain't but one in fifty who can pay his way back home,
Pay his way back home.

God find the snow blind trapper and help him on his way,
God bless the drunken fiddler when he finds the time to play
And here the words of the dying man left frozen in the cold
And pity the weary miner who's never found his gold,
Who, never found his gold

Well I wish I were in portland or some other seacoast town
I'd sail around this whold wide world and lay this cradle down
Lay this cradle down