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THE Sierra rivers are flooded
every spring by the melting of the snow as regularly as the famous old Nile.
They begin to rise in May, and in June high-water mark is reached. But
because the melting does not go on rapidly over all the fountains, high and
low, simultaneously, and the melted snow is not reinforced at this time of
year by rain, the spring floods are seldom very violent or destructive. The
thousand falls, however, and the cascades in the canons are then in full
bloom, and sing songs from one end of the range to the other. Of course the
snow on the lower tributaries of the rivers is first melted, then that on
the higher fountains most exposed to sunshine, and about a month later the
cooler, shadowy fountains send down their treasures, thus allowing the main
trunk streams nearly six weeks to get their waters hurried through the
foothills and across the lowlands to the sea. Therefore very violent spring
floods are avoided, and will be as long as the shading, restraining forests
last. The rivers of the north half of the range are still less subject to
sudden floods, because their upper fountains in great part lie protected
from the changes of the weather beneath thick folds of lava, just as many of
the rivers of Alaska lie beneath folds of ice, coming to the light farther
down the range in large springs, while those of the high Sierra lie on the
surface of solid granite, exposed to every change of temperature. More than
ninety per cent of the water derived from the snow and ice of Mount Shasta
is at once absorbed and drained away beneath the porous lava folds of the
mountain, where mumbling and groping in the dark they at length find larger
fissures and tunnel-like caves from which they emerge, filtered and cool, in
the form of large springs, some of them so large they give birth to rivers
that set out on their journeys beneath the sun without any visible
intermediate period of childhood. Thus the Shasta River issues from a large
lake-like spring in Shasta Valley, and about two thirds of the volume of the
McCloud River gushes forth suddenly from the face of a lava bluff in a
roaring spring seventy-five yards wide.
These spring rivers of the
north are of course shorter than those of the south whose tributaries extend
up to the tops of the mountains. Fall River, an important tributary of the
Pitt or Upper Sacramento, is only about ten miles long, and is all falls,
cascades, and springs from its head to its confluence with the Pitt.
Bountiful springs, charmingly embowered, issue from the rocks at one end of
it, a snowy fall a hundred and eighty feet high thunders at the other, and a
rush of crystal rapids sing and dance between. Of course such streams are
but little affected by the weather. Sheltered from evaporation their flow is
nearly as full in the autumn as in the time of general spring floods, while
those of the high Sierra diminish to less than the hundredth part of their
springtime prime, shallowing in autumn to a series of silent pools among the
rocks and hollows of their channels, connected by feeble, creeping threads
of water, like the sluggish sentences of a tired writer, connected by a
drizzle of "ands" and "buts." Strange to say, the greatest floods occur in
winter, when one would suppose all the wild waters would be muffled and
chained in frost and snow. The same long, all-day storms of the so-called
Rainy Season in California, that give rain to the lowlands, give dry frosty
snow to the mountains. But at rare intervals warm rains and warm winds
invade the mountains and push back the snow-line from two thousand feet to
eight thousand, or even higher, and then come the big floods.
I was usually driven down out
of the High Sierra about the end of November, but the winter of 1874 and
1875 was so warm and calm that I was tempted to seek general views of the
geology and topography of the basin of Feather River in January. And I had
just completed a hasty survey of the region, and made my way down to winter
quarters, when one of the grandest flood-storms that I ever saw broke on the
mountains. I was then in the edge of the main forest belt at a small
foothill town called Knoxville, on the divide between the waters of the
Feather and Yuba Rivers. The cause of this notable flood was simply a sudden
and copious fall of warm wind and rain on the basins of these rivers at a
time when they contained a considerable quantity of snow. The rain was so
heavy and long-sustained that it was, of itself, sufficient to make a good
wild flood, while the snow which the warm wind and rain melted on the upper
and middle regions of the basins was sufficient to make another flood equal
to that of the rain. Now these two distinct harvests of flood waters were
gathered simultaneously and poured out on the plain in one magnificent
avalanche. The basins of the Yuba and Feather, like many others of the
Sierra, are admirably adapted to the growth of floods of this kind. Their
many tributaries radiate far and wide, comprehending extensive areas, and
the tributaries are steeply inclined, while the trunks are comparatively
level. While the flood-storm was in progress the thermometer at Knoxville
ranged between 440 and 500; and when warm wind and warm rain fall
simultaneously on snow contained in basins like these, both the rain and
that portion of the snow which the rain and wind melt are at first sponged
up and held back until the combined mass becomes sludge, which at length,
suddenly dissolving, slips and descends all together to the trunk channel;
and since the deeper the stream the faster it flows, the flooded portion of
the current above overtakes the slower foothill portion below it, and all
sweeping forward together with a high, overcurling front, debouches on the
open plain with a violence and suddenness that at first seem wholly
unaccountable. The destructiveness of the lower portion of this particular
flood was somewhat augmented by mining gravel in the river channels, and by
levees which gave way after having at first restrained and held back the
accumulating waters. These exaggerating conditions did not, however, greatly
influence the general result, the main effect having been caused by the rare
combination of flood factors indicated above. It is a pity that but few
people meet and enjoy storms so noble as this in their homes in the
mountains, for, spending themselves in the open levels of the plains, they
are likely to be remembered more by the bridges and houses they carry away
than by their beauty or the thousand blessings they bring to the fields and
gardens of Nature.
On the morning of the flood,
January 19, all the Feather and Yuba landscapes were covered with running
water, muddy torrents filled every gulch and ravine, and the sky was thick
with rain. The pines had long been sleeping in sunshine; they were now
awake, roaring and waving with the beating storm, and the winds sweeping
along the curves of hill and dale, streaming through the woods, surging and
gurgling on the tops of rocky ridges, made the wildest of wild storm melody.
It was easy to see that only
a small part of the rain reached the ground in the form of drops. Most of it
was thrashed into dusty spray like that into which small waterfalls are
divided when they dash on shelving rocks. Never have I seen water coming
from the sky in denser or more passionate streams. The wind chased the spray
forward in choking drifts, and compelled me again and again to seek shelter
in the dell copses and back of large trees to rest and catch my breath.
Wherever I went, on ridges or in hollows, enthusiastic water still flashed
and gurgled about my ankles, recalling a wild winter flood in Yosemite when
a hundred waterfalls came booming and chanting together and filled the grand
valley with a sea-like roar.
After drifting an hour or two
in the lower woods, I set out for the summit of a hill nine hundred feet
high, with a view to getting as near the heart of the storm as possible. In
order to reach it I had to cross Dry Creek, a tributary of the Yuba that
goes crawling along the base of the hill on the northwest. It was now a
booming river as large as the Tuolumne at ordinary stages, its current brown
with mining-mud washed down from many a "claim," and mottled with
sluice-boxes, fence-rails, and logs that had long lain above its reach. A
slim foot-bridge stretched across it, now scarcely above the swollen
current. Here I was glad to linger, gazing and listening, while the storm
was in its richest mood — the gray rain-flood above, the brown river-flood
beneath. The language of the river was scarcely less enchanting than that of
the wind and rain; the sublime overboom of the main bouncing, exulting
current, the swash and gurgle of the eddies, the keen dash and clash of
heavy waves breaking against rocks, and the smooth, downy hush of shallow
currents feeling their way through the willow thickets of the margin. And
amid all this varied throng of sounds I heard the smothered bumping and
rumbling of boulders on the bottom as they were shoving and rolling forward
against one another in a wild rush, after having lain still for probably one
hundred years or more.
The glad creek rose high
above its banks and wandered from its channel out over many a briery
sand-flat and meadow. Alders and willows waist-deep were bearing up against
the current with nervous trembling gestures, as if afraid of being carried
away, while supple branches bending confidingly, dipped lightly and rose
again, as if stroking the wild waters in play. Leaving the bridge and
passing on through the storm-thrashed woods, all the ground seemed to be
moving. Pine-tassels, flakes of bark, soil, leaves, and broken branches were
being swept forward, and many a rock-fragment, weathered from exposed
ledges, was now receiving its first rounding and polishing in the wild
streams of the storm. On they rushed through every gulch and hollow,
leaping, gliding, working with a will, and rejoicing like living creatures.
Nor was the flood confined to
the ground. Every tree had a water system of its own spreading far and wide
like miniature Amazons and Mississippis.
Toward midday, cloud, wind,
and rain reached their highest development. The storm was in full bloom, and
formed, from my commanding outlook on the hilltop, one of the most glorious
views I ever beheld. As far as the eye could reach, above, beneath, around,
wind-driven rain filled the air like one vast waterfall. Detached clouds
swept imposingly up the valley, as if they were endowed with independent
motion and had special work to do in replenishing the mountain wells, now
rising above the pine tops, now descending into their midst, fondling their
arrowy spires and soothing every branch and leaf with gentleness in the
midst of all the savage sound and motion. Others keeping near the ground
glided behind separate groves, and brought them forward into relief with
admirable distinctness; or, passing in front, eclipsed whole groves in
succession, pine after pine melting in their gray fringes and bursting forth
again seemingly clearer than before.
The forms of storms are in
great part measured, and controlled by the topography of the regions where
they rise and over which they pass. When, therefore, we attempt to study
them from the valleys, or from gaps and openings of the forest, we are
confounded by a multitude of separate and apparently antagonistic
impressions. The bottom of the storm is broken up into innumerable waves and
currents that surge against the hillsides like sea waves against a shore,
and these, reacting on the nether surface of the storm, erode immense
cavernous hollows and canons, and sweep forward the resulting detritus in
long trains, like the moraines of glaciers. But, as we ascend, these
partial, confusing effects disappear and the phenomena are beheld united and
harmonious.
The longer I gazed into the
storm, the more plainly visible it became. The drifting cloud detritus gave
it a kind of visible body, which explained many perplexing phenomena, and
published its movements in plain terms, while the texture of the falling
mass of rain rounded it out and rendered it more complete. Because raindrops
differ in size they fall at different velocities and overtake and clash
against one another, producing mist and spray. They also, of course, yield
unequal compliance to the force of the wind, which gives rise to a still
greater degree of interference, and passionate gusts sweep off clouds of
spray from the groves like that torn from wave tops in a gale. All these
factors of irregularity in density, color, and texture of the general rain
mass tend to make it the more appreciable and telling. It is then seen as
one grand flood rushing over bank and brae, bending the pines like weeds,
curving this way and that, whirling in huge eddies in hollows and dells,
while the main current pours grandly over all, like ocean currents over the
landscapes that lie hidden at the bottom of the sea.
I watched the gestures of the
pines while the storm was at its height, and it was easy to see that they
were not distressed. Several large sugar pines stood near the thicket in
which I was sheltered, bowing solemnly and tossing their long arms as if
interpreting the very words of the storm while accepting its wildest onsets
with passionate exhilaration. The lions were feeding. Those who have
observed sunflowers feasting on sunshine during the golden days of Indian
summer know that none of their gestures express thankfulness. Their
celestial food is too heartily given, too heartily taken to leave room for
thanks. The pines were evidently accepting the benefactions of the storm in
the same whole-souled manner; and when I looked down among the budding
hazels, and still lower to the young violets and fern tufts on the rocks, I
noticed the same divine methods of giving and taking, and the same exquisite
adaptations of what seems an outbreak of violent and uncontrollable force to
the purposes of beautiful and delicate life. Calms like sleep come upon
landscapes, just as they do on people and trees, and storms awaken them in
the same way. In the dry midsummer of the lower portion of the range the
withered hills and valleys seem to lie as empty and expressionless as dead
shells on a shore. Even the highest mountains may be found occasionally dull
and uncommunicative as if in some way they had lost countenance and shrunk
to less than half their real stature. But when the lightnings crash and echo
in the canons, and the clouds come down wreathing and crowning their bald
snowy heads, every feature beams with expression and they rise again in all
their imposing majesty.
Storms are fine speakers, and
tell all they know, but their voices of lightning, torrent, and rushing wind
are much less numerous than the nameless still, small voices too low for
human ears; and because we are poor listeners we fail to catch much that is
fairly within reach. Our best rains are heard mostly on roofs, and winds in
chimneys; and when by choice or compulsion we are pushed into the heart of a
storm, the confusion made by cumbersome equipments and nervous haste and
mean fear, prevent our hearing any other than the loudest expressions. Yet
we may draw enjoyment from storm sounds that are beyond hearing, and storm
movements we cannot see. The sublime whirl of planets around their suns is
as silent as raindrops oozing in the dark among the roots of plants. In this
great storm, as in every other, there were tones and gestures inexpressibly
gentle manifested in the midst of what is called violence and fury, but
easily recognized by all who look and listen for them. The rain brought out
the colors of the woods with delightful freshness, the rich brown of the
bark of the trees and the fallen burs and leaves and dead ferns; the grays
of rocks and lichens; the light purple of swelling buds, and the warm yellow
greens of the libocedrus and mosses. The air was steaming with delightful
fragrance, not 'rising and wafting past in separate masses, but diffused
through all the atmosphere. Pine woods are always fragrant, but most so in
spring when the young tassels are opening and in warm weather when the
various gums and balsams are softened by the sun. The wind was now chafing
their innumerable needles and the warm rain was steeping them. Monardella
grows here in large beds in the openings, and there is plenty of laurel in
dells and manzanita on the hillsides, and the rosy, fragrant chamcebatia
carpets the ground almost everywhere. These, with the gums and balsams of
the woods, form the main local fragrance-fountains of the storm. The
ascending clouds of aroma wind-rolled and rain-washed became pure like light
and traveled with the wind as part of it. Toward the middle of the afternoon
the main flood cloud lifted along its western border revealing a beautiful
section of the Sacramento Valley some twenty or thirty miles away,
brilliantly sun-lighted and glistening with rain-sheets as if paved with
silver. Soon afterward a jagged bluff-like cloud with a sheer face appeared
over the valley of the Yuba, dark-colored and roughened with numerous
furrows like some huge lava-table. The blue Coast Range was seen stretching
along the sky like a beveled wall, and the somber, craggy Marysville Buttes
rose impressively out of the flooded plain like islands out of the sea. Then
the rain began to abate and I sauntered down through the dripping bushes
reveling in the universal vigor and freshness that inspired all the life
about me. How clean and unworn and immortal the woods seemed to be! — the
lofty cedars in full bloom laden with golden pollen and their washed plumes
shining; the pines rocking gently and settling back into rest, and the
evening sunbeams spangling on the broad leaves of the madronos, their
tracery of yellow boughs relieved against dusky thickets of chestnut oak;
liverworts, lycopodiums, ferns were exulting in glorious revival, and every
moss that had ever lived seemed to be coming crowding back from the dead to
clothe each trunk and stone in living green. The steaming ground seemed
fairly to throb and tingle with life; smilax, fritillaria, saxifrage, and
young violets were pushing up as if already conscious of the summer glory,
and innumerable green and yellow buds were peeping and smiling everywhere.
As for the birds and
squirrels, not a wing or tail of them was to be seen while the storm was
blowing. Squirrels dislike wet weather more than cats do; therefore they
were at home rocking in their dry nests. The birds were hiding in the dells
out of the wind, some of the strongest of them pecking at acorns and
manzanita berries, but most were perched on low twigs, their breast feathers
puffed out and keeping one another company through the hard time as best
they could.
When I arrived at the village
about sundown the good people bestirred themselves, pitying my bedraggled
condition as if I were some benumbed castaway snatched from the sea, while
I, in turn, warm with excitement and reeking like the ground, pitied them
for being dry and defrauded of all the glory that Nature had spread round
about them that day.
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