The dripping of rain, the low gurgle of water, and a leaden sky greeted us the next morning as we lay beside the half-submerged levee of Sacramento.  Here, however, the novelty of boats to convey us to the hotels was an appeal that was irresistible.  I resigned myself to a dripping rubber-cased mariner called “Joe,” and, wrapping myself in a shining cloak of the like material, about as suggestive of warmth as court plaster might have been, took my seat in the stern sheets of his boat.  It was no slight inward struggle to part from the steamer that to most of the passengers was the only visible connecting link between us and the dry and habitable earth, but we pulled away and entered the city, stemming a rapid current as we shot the levee.

We glided up the long level of K Street—­once a cheerful, busy thoroughfare, now distressing in its silent desolation.  The turbid water which seemed to meet the horizon edge before us flowed at right angles in sluggish rivers through the streets.  Nature had revenged herself on the local taste by disarraying the regular rectangles by huddling houses on street corners, where they presented abrupt gables to the current, or by capsizing them in compact ruin.  Crafts of all kinds were gliding in and out of low-arched doorways.  The water was over the top of the fences surrounding well-kept gardens, in the first stories of hotels and private dwellings, trailing its slime on velvet carpets as well as roughly boarded floors.  And a silence quite as suggestive as the visible desolation was in the voiceless streets that no longer echoed to carriage wheel or footfall.  The low ripple of water, the occasional splash of oars, or the warning cry of boatmen were the few signs of life and habitation.

With such scenes before my eyes and such sounds in my ears, as I lie lazily in the boat, is mingled the song of my gondolier who sings to the music of his oars.  It is not quite as romantic as his brother of the Lido might improvise, but my Yankee “Giuseppe” has the advantage of earnestness and energy, and gives a graphic description of the terrors of the past week and of noble deeds of self-sacrifice and devotion, occasionally pointing out a balcony from which some California Bianca or Laura had been snatched, half-clothed and famished.  Giuseppe is otherwise peculiar, and refuses the proffered fare, for—­am I not a citizen of San Francisco, which was first to respond to the suffering cry of Sacramento? and is not he, Giuseppe, a member of the Howard Society?  No!  Giuseppe is poor, but cannot take my money.  Still, if I must spend it, there is the Howard Society, and the women and children without food and clothes at the Agricultural Hall.

I thank the generous gondolier, and we go to the Hall—­a dismal, bleak place, ghastly with the memories of last year’s opulence and plenty, and here Giuseppe’s fare is swelled by the stranger’s mite.  But here Giuseppe tells me of the “Relief Boat” which leaves for the flooded district in the interior, and here, profiting by the lesson he has taught me, I make the resolve to turn my curiosity to the account of others, and am accepted of those who go forth to succor and help the afflicted.  Giuseppe takes charge of my carpetbag, and does not part from me until I stand on the slippery deck of “Relief Boat No. 3.”