erever 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 900 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 100
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 con