216 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
to wliich iraproveineuts ami conveniences had been added each year for five years— these were all gone, 
every vestige of them, and nothing was to he 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 
flatboats which had sujiported it, and which were kept from escaping hy two wire cables made fast to 
the river hank. The river continued to rise the next forenoon until it reached a maximum height of 
26f feet above its summer level. This, of course, is not a very extraordinary rise for a slow river; hut 
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 he 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 canyon so swiftly. Those 
who saw this mighty volume of water at its highest point, rushing through its mountain canyon with 
such speed, say that it was appalling, while the roar of the torrent was so deafening that persons 
standing side hy side on the hank could not hear each other when talking in an ordinary tone of voice. 
It must he over two centuries since 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 grave- 
yard, where the venerable chiefs of the McCloud have been taken for burial for at least two hundred 
years, and there is no knowing how much longer. One-third of this gravejmrd was swept .away hy 
the high water last winter, and the ground below was strewn with dead men's hones. 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 the Indians to bury their fathers where they thought there was the least danger of the sacred 
hones being disturbed hy the floods. 
When the w.aters subsided it hec.ame apparent what a clean sweep the river had made. Here 
and there the stumps of a few jiosts, broken off and worn down nearly to the ground hy driftwood 
rubbing over them, formed the only vestiges whatever to indicate that anjThing had ever existed 
there where the station stood but the cle.an rocky bar th.at the falling water had left. 
The writer, at the direction of Professor Baird, proceeded immediately to rebuild 
the station, under a special appropriation made by Congress for that purpose. The 
entire cost of the new station, including the expense of taking the season’s salmon 
eggs (7,500,000), was $15,000. 
The only accident that ever occurred to the current wheel during the egg-taking 
season happened this year, but it was properly repaired, and owing to the really mag- 
nificent help of the Indians, who worked incessantly for seventeen hours, no losses 
occurred to the eggs. The breeding salmon aiipeared in the river in great numbers, 
making it necessary to take eggs during only about half the season. 
Nothing of special interest happened in 1882, but in 1883 great dismay was caused 
by the uonappearance of the salmon in the upper tributaries of the Sacramento. The 
Southern Pacific Eailroad Company had begun building its line from Bedding north 
toward Oregon, and during the summer had reached the mouth of Pitt Eiver, about 8 
miles below Baird station. It is said to be the custom of this company to employ a 
great deal of gunpowder and dynamite for making excavations, and they had used 
these exi^losives to such an extent at and below the mouth of Pitt Eiver that the 
breeding salmon coming up the river to spawn either could not get by where the 
blasting was going on or Avere killed outright by it. At all events, salmon were very 
scarce in the McCloud, and less than a million eggs were secured this season, and 
these only with great difficulty. 
Owing to the destruction of the salmon by the railroad workers,^ Professor Baird 
1 We were told that there were 6,000 workmeu, white men and Chinamen, employed in the vicinity 
of Pitt River in building the road. 
