Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/205

 REALLY can’t remember when I last wrote home, but I think it was before the worst of our rainy season, as during the greater part of that time we were hibernating, sunk in a lethargy too profound to be disturbed by overflowing pigeon-holes of unanswered letters. Our winter was a medley of rain, snow, hail, landslides, and floods,—amazing even to the oldest inhabitant, who promptly remarked that he had “seen nothing like it for twenty-five years.” We had fifty-two successive days and nights of rain, with frequent dashes of snow and hail between showers; yet we remained reasonably calm, though the Noahs, I believe, took to the ark after a little dash of forty days.

The Winter rains were expected, and were even enjoyed; it was their continuance so far into the Spring that palled on us. The last four weeks it rained steadily without variation. Day after day we saw the same drab sky, the same gray rain dolefully slanting across the glen, veiling the hills and shutting out the world,—a monotony that not only depressed but stupefied.

All this surplus rain-water, together with that caused by the melting of the snow in the mountains, produced fearful high waters and floods. And really I was half