It was now a booming river as large as the Tuolumne at ordinary stages, its current brown with mining-mud washed down from many a "claim," and mottled with sluice-boxes, fence-rails, and logs that had long lain above its reach.

A slim foot-bridge stretched across it, now scarcely above the swollen current.

Here I was glad to linger, gazing and listening, while the storm was in its richest mood--the gray rain-flood above, the brown river-flood beneath.

The language of the river was scarcely less enchanting than that of the wind and rain; the sublime overboom of the main bouncing, exulting current, the swash and gurgle of the eddies, the keen dash and clash of heavy waves breaking against rocks, and the smooth, downy hush of shallow currents feeling their way through the willow thickets of the margin.

And amid all this varied throng of sounds I heard the smothered bumping and rumbling of boulders on the bottom as they were shoving and rolling forward against one another in a wild rush, after having lain still for probably 100 years or more.
The glad creek rose high above its banks and wandered from its channel out over many a briery sand-flat and meadow.