10G4 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [2] 



the sky at once. Mr. J. B. Campbell relates that near his house, in a 

 canon which is dry in summer, the water in not many minutes became 

 30 feet deep, and the violence of the current was so great that trees a 

 hundred feet long were swept down, trunk, branches and all, into the 

 river. On the 2d of February the McCloud Eiver began to rise at the 

 rate of a foot an hour. By 9 o'clock in the evening it was 16 feet 

 and 8 inches above its ordinary level. This was within 4 inches of the 

 danger-mark, and two young men who were at the fishery, Eichard D. 

 Hubbard and Oscar Fritze, made an attempt, at the risk of their lives, 

 to save some of the most valuable movable property in the buildings. 

 With great courage and determination they waded through the fierce 

 current, in the blinding rain and pitchy darkness, and rescued many val- 

 uable things, but the water around the house was then up to their 

 shoulders and the unequal struggle could not be long maintained. 

 These young men are, however, entitled to great credit for succeeding 

 in rescuing what they did from the flood on that frightful night. 



The water was soon a foot above the danger-mark, and the buildings 

 began to rock and totter as if nearly ready to fall. There was now no 

 hope of saving them or anything in them. At half-past two in the 

 morning of the 3d of February, they toppled over with a great crash 

 and were siezed by the resistless current and hurried down the river. 



When the day dawned nothing was to be seen of the main structures 

 which composed the United States salmon-breeding station on the Mc- 

 Cloud River. The mess-house, where the workmen had eaten and slept 

 for nine successive seasons, and which contained the original cabin, 12 

 feet by 14 feet, where the pioneers of the United States Fish Commis- 

 sion on this coast lived during the first season of 1872 ; the hatching- 

 house, which, with the tents that preceded it, had turned out 70,000,000 

 salmon eggs, the distribution of which had reached from New Zealand 

 to St. Petersburg ; the large dwelling-house, to which improvements and 

 conveniences had been added each year for five years — these were all 

 gone, every vestige of them, and nothing was to be seen in the direction 

 where they stood except the wreck of the faithful wheel which through 

 summer's sun and winter's rain had poured 100,000,000 gallons of water 

 over the salmon eggs in the hatchery, and which now lay dismantled 

 and ruined upon the flat-boats which had supported it, and which were 

 kept from escaping by two wire cables made fast to the river bank. 

 The river continued to rise the next forenoon until it reached a maxi- 

 mum height of 26 feet and 8 iuches above its summer level. This, of 

 course, is not a very extraordinary rise for a slow-moving river, but 

 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 in a very short time, and with what velocity 

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

 was sweeping it out of the canon so swiftly. 



