[3] OPERATIONS AT THE m'cLOUD RIVER SALMON STATION. 1065 



Those who saw this mighty volume of water at it highest point, rush- 

 ing through its mountain cafiou with such speed, say that it was ap- 

 palling, while the roar of the torrent was so deafening that persons 

 standing side by side on the bank could not hear each other when 

 talking in an ordinary tone of voice. 



It must be over two centuries since the McCloud Eiver 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 grave-yard, where the venerable chiefs of the 

 McCloud have been taken for burial for at least two hundred years, 

 and tiiere is no knowing how much longer. One-third of this grave 

 yard was swept away by the high water last winter, and the ground 

 below was strewn with dead men's bones. 



Kow, 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 driftwood rubbing over 

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

 ever existed there but the clean rocky bar that the falling water had 

 left. 



The inventory showed that over $4,000 worth of hatching apparatus, 

 house furniture, tools, and other articles were lost or destroyed by the 

 flood, besides the buildings themselves. The whole loss could not have 

 been less than $15,000.* 



At the time of the disaster all communication with the outside world 

 was shut off by the high water in the rivers. On the 6th of February^ 

 Mr. Myron Green succeeded with great difiiculty in taking a telegram 

 from the trout ponds to Redding, a distance of 25 miles. Mr. Green was. 

 three days in accomplishing the journey', and in several instances swam 

 the intervening creeks, carrying his clothes on his head. As sooti as 

 the news reached Professor Baird he telegraphed to Hon. B. B. Red- 

 ding, of San Francisco, to telegra])h Senator Booth, at Washington, to 

 obtain an appropriation for rebuilding the fishery. It was now almost 

 at the close of the Congressional session, but Senator Booth succeeded 

 in securing an appropriation of $10,000, to be expended under the direc- 

 tion of Professor Baird in restoring the buildings and property destroyed 

 by the flood. As soon as this appropriation was made Professor Baird 

 gave me instructions to proceed at an early date to the McCloud River 

 and enter at once upon the work of restoring the fishery. 



* An account of the effects of tlio bigli water at the United States trout ponds, 4 

 miles farther up the McCloud River, will be found in the report of operations at that 

 point. 



