Page:The Overland Monthly, Jan-June 1894.djvu/314

226

influx of mining and ranching debris, until every resemblance is effaced to the beautiful flood that bears the same name above Red Bluff. From Red Bluff up to the prodigious cleft of its cafion in the Trinity chain, the Sacramento presents a succession of ineffable views, sun-dia moncled or moon-hushed, but at all times and seasons inexpressibly majestic and tranquilizing. Sometimes its sweeping quicksilver coils about bluffs of appalling height, stuccoed by nodules of nests built there by multitudes of diving swallows; and again a fertilizing current expands lakelike where green or tawny levels come down to steepled bowers of wild grapes on the brink. This vine, Vitus Californica, is nowhere so conspicuous as along the Sacramento, where it adds an indescribable wildwood luxuriance to the banks. For miles its sheeny curtains, caught now and again to the topmost limb of gigantic oak or cottonwood, trail an irregular fringe far out upon the stream.

The thirsty wayfarer up the Sacramento above its junction with Cottonwood Creek may go weary distances