236 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



when it is remembered that the McCloud is at low water a succession of 

 cascades and rapids, having an average fall of 40 feet to the mile, it will 

 be seen at once what a vast volume of water must have been poured 

 into this rapid river within a very short time, and with what velocity 

 it must have come to have raised it 26 feet when its natural fall was 

 sweeping it out of the canon so swiftly. Those who saw this mighty 

 volume of water at its highest point, rushing through its mountain canon 

 with such speed, say that it was appalling, while the roar of the torrent 

 was so deafening that persons standing side by side on the bank could 

 not hear each other talk. 



"It must be over two centuries since the McCloud River rose, if ever, 

 as high as it did last winter. There is very good evidence of this on the 

 very spot where the fishery was located, for just behind the mess-house, 

 and exactly under where the fishery flag floats with a good south breeze, 

 is an Indian graveyard, where the venerable chiefs of the McClouds 

 have been taken for burial for at least two hundred years, and there 

 is no knowing how much longer. One-third of this grave yard was 

 swept away last winter, and the ground below was strewn with dead 

 men's bones. Now the fact that the Indians have been in the habit of 

 burying their dead in this spot for two centuries proves that the river 

 has never risen to the height of last winter's rise within that time, for 

 nothing could induce Indians to bury their fathers where they thought 

 there was the least danger of the sacred bones being disturbed by floods. 



"When the waters subsided, it became apparent what a clean sweep 

 the river had made. Here and there the stumps of a few posts, broken 

 off and worn down nearly to the ground by the drift wood rubbing over 

 them, formed the only vestiges whatever to indicate that anything had 

 ever existed there but the clean, rocky bar that the falling waters had 

 left." 



An appropriation was made by Congress for rebuilding the station, 

 and the work of restoration began in May and was completed in Sep- 

 tember, the newly erected buildings being much better than those that 

 were destroyed. Seven and a half million salmon eggs were taken this 

 year. 



At the trout ponds many parent fish were killed by the mud which 

 was carried by the very heavy rains into the ponds. Only 201,000 

 trout eggs were distributed this year. During the year many very large 

 trout were caught in the river and put alive in the ponds. 



1882. 



The appropriations came so late this year that very little was done 

 at the salmon-breeding station. Four million salmon eggs were taken, 

 and all hatched for the Sacramento River. 



At the trout ponds 337,500 eggs were taken, most of which were 

 shipped east. 



