The honest miner raked from a hundred to a thousand dollars out of his claim a day, and what with the gambling dens and the other entertainments, he hadn't a cent the next morning, if he had any sort of luck.

They cooked their own bacon and beans, sewed on their own buttons, washed their own shirts -- blue woollen ones; and if a man wanted a fight on his hands without any annoying delay, all he had to do was to appear in public in a white shirt or a stove-pipe hat, and he would be accommodated.

For those people hated aristocrats.

They had a particular and malignant animosity toward what they called a "biled shirt." It was a wild, free, disorderly, grotesque society! Men--only swarming hosts of stalwart men--nothing juvenile, nothing feminine, visible anywhere! In those days miners would flock in crowds to catch a glimpse of that rare and blessed spectacle, a woman! Old inhabitants tell how, in a certain camp, the news went abroad early in the morning that a woman was come! They had seen a calico dress hanging out of a wagon down at the camping-ground--sign of emigrants from over the great plains.

Everybody went down there, and a shout went up when an actual, bona fide dress was discovered fluttering in the wind! The male emigrant was visible.