The river was known to rise from 20 to 60 feet in 24 hours, in its
narrow and precipitous walls.

At flood time, then, we often went down to the river through the orchard
of big old cherry trees planted by my grandfather, to watch the mass of
wreckage rushing by. Great logs would go down end over end; mining
machinery caught in the limbs of uprooted trees; quantities of lumber,
and once a miner's bunk with sodden gray blanket and a wet and frantic
squirrel upon it. I worried for days over the fate of that squirrel.

They tell the story of a Chinaman floating down upon a log.

"Hello, John, where you go?" was shouted. John shook his head, sadly.

"Me no sabe! Maybe Saclimento - maybe San Flancisco. No got time talkee,
now."

* * * * *

"Look, the water is up to the top of the old stone pier," said one of
the others.

"Mammy Kate's 'ghost' would have a hard time haunting it now," I
laughed. "He'd be under twenty feet of water."

"What ghost?"

"Why, the tollkeeper's, of the old bridge. The one who hated the Indians
so."