The first town I passed through was a newly discovered mining town called French Corral.  Here I found an old Wisconsin friend Wm. Sublet, the foster father of the accomplishen wife of Mayor S.W.  Boring of San Jose.  From here I went to Marysville.  The storm had been raging high in the mountains for some days, and the Yuba river rising fast, overflowing its banks as I walked into town, and the next day the merchants were very busy piling their goods above high water mark.  I went to a hotel and called for a bed.  “Yes,” says the landlord “Is your name John or Peter?” I told him William, which he set down in his book and we went up stairs to the best room which was fitted up with berths three tiers high on each side, and only one or two empty ones.  He looked around for covers, but none could be found unoccupied, but one fellow who was sound asleep and snoring awfully, so he took the blanket off from him saying:  “He wont know a thing about it till morning, be jabers, so don’t say a word.”

Next morning the river was booming, its surface covered with all sorts of mining outfit such as flume timber, rockers, various qualities of lumber, pieces of trees as well as whole ones, water wheels and other traps.  The river between Downieville and here must have been swept clean of all material that would float, including “long Toms.”  The water continued to rise till it covered the Plaza, and in two days a steamer came up and sailed across the public square.  This looked like a wet season to me, and when the boat was ready to go down the river I went on board, bound for Sacramento.  Here it was also getting terrible wet and muddy, and the rain kept pouring down.  In the morning I worked my way up J street and saw a six-mule team wading up the streets the driver on foot, tramping through the sloppy mud, occasionally stepping in a hole and falling his whole length in the mud.  On the street where so much trouble was met by the teamsters, a lot of idlers stood on the sidewalk, and when a driver would fall and go nearly out of sight, they would, like a set of loafers, laugh at him and blackguard him with much noise, and as they were numerous they feared nothing.

Suddenly a miner, who had lately arrived from the mountains, raised his room window in the second story of a house, put out one leg and then his body, as far as he could, and having nothing on but his night clothes, shouted to the noisy crowd below:—­“Say can’t you d——­d farmers plow now?” At this he dodged back quickly into his window as if he expected something might be thrown at him.  The rain continued, and the water rose gradually till it began to run slowly through the streets, and all the business stopped except gambling and drinking whisky, which were freely carried on in the saloons day and night.