I seek the engine room, and in the company of some of the few half-drowned sufferers we have already picked up from temporary rafts, I forget the general aspect of desolation in their individual misery.

Later we meet the San Francisco packet, and transfer a number of our passengers.

From them we learn how inward-bound vessels report to have struck the well-defined channel of the Sacramento, fifty miles beyond the bar.

There is a voluntary contribution taken among the generous travelers for the use of our afflicted, and we part company with a hearty "Godspeed" on either side.

But our signal lights are not far distant before a familiar sound comes back to us--an indomitable Yankee cheer--which scatters the gloom.
Our course is altered, and we are steaming over the obliterated banks far in the interior.