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or by smking shafts through the lava flow and reaching the ancient river beds where
gold nuggets were trapped in pockets or cracks in the rock." The first method, which
involved digging out sand, clay and gravel from the bed of a creek and washing it in a
shallow pan, was by far the easiest as it required only a few simple tools and allowed
the miners to work alone. To search for gold by the other methods, the miners needed
to form companies to buy more sophisticated equipment and provide sufficient
manpower. The ItaUan speakers, destitute and lacking mining skiU, were generally
Umited to the first method which rendered them little: the superficial gold had all but
been exhausted in the earUest years of the gold msh and successful miners were taking
their search deeper into the soU.
In order to adopt slightly more sophisticated mining methods requiring picks
and shovels, buckets, a wheelbarrow and the equipment for washing the 'pay dirt',
some Italian speakers formed small partnerships of two to four men and pooled their
resources.^"* Digging into the soil surrounding the creek and washing the dirt in a
stream, some teams were able to find gold. Besides a dish, the simplest items for
washing were a cradle, long-tom or sluice box, all machines which allowed larger
amounts of pay dirt to be washed and a more efficient trapping of gold grains and
nuggets. Before long, however, these methods and equipment were also replaced as
miners relied less and less on alluvial mining. Wealthy English settlers began forming
large companies employing teams of miners, some of whom included Italian speakers,
to operate sophisticated equipment for the extraction of deeper gold. While some
Italian speakers accepted this form of employment, which guaranteed an income,
others were unwilling to surrender the independent life-style they had known as
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