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So for a couple of hours he went ahead over rolling fallow land to the meadow-flats and a pale shining of freshets; then hit on a lane skirting the water, and reached an amphibious village; five miles from Storling, he was informed, and a clear traverse of lanes, not to be mistaken, 'if he kept a sharp eye open. The sharpness of his eyes was divided between the sword-belt of the starry Hunter and the shifting lanes that zig-tagged his course below.

Moreover, these floods and freshets, which diversify the general dryness, wash away from the mountain sides, and either wash away or cover in the valleys, the rich fertile soil which it took tens of thousands of years for Nature to form; and it is lost forever, and until the forests grow again it can not be replaced.

The principal diggings are reported to be at present, and will probably continue, flooded for several months to come, so that unless other diggings apart from the river beds are discovered, the production of gold will not increase until the summer freshets are over, which will probably happen about the middle of August next.

No craft, none, at least, which were on the banks of the river, could live in such a boiling torrent as that; for it was during one of the high spring freshets. But the ferryman was of a different opinion, and could not brook the thought of their dying before his eyes without his making a single effort to save them.

The thunder of the king's iron-shod hoofs was in her ears like the roar of the spring freshets when the empty cañons poured their temporary torrents down the Rockface into the Valley. She knew he was running as she had never ridden before. She had never called upon him before. It was like being adrift upon the wind. She heard the note of his speed rising in her ears.

He hastened up over the rocks to the heaps of logs and branches stranded on the high end of the barrier by the freshets. Every year the river, swollen by the spring rains, brimmed over the top of this natural dam. Yet not all the heaps lying on the ledges were driftwood.

Wood, fit for bridging, was often not to be had, and in such cases the only resource was to halt for the freshets to subside a matter in the case of the headwaters of the Chariton, for instance, of over three weeks' delay. These were dreary waitings upon Providence. The most spirited and sturdy murmured most at their forced inactivity.

The river, with its clear, sparkling waters, was as beautiful as ever, but while they were still two miles from where the trading-post had been located, they noticed a change in the character of the surroundings. The heavy spring freshets had done their work, and the river banks were torn into numerous gullies and creeks, while the trunks and limbs of great trees lay in all directions.

During its lowest stages, the Mississippi is often forty feet "within its banks;" in other words, the surface is forty feet below the level of the land which borders the river. It rises with the freshets, and, when "bank full," is level with the surrounding lowland. It does not always stop at this point; sometimes it rises two, four, six, or even ten feet above its banks.

Kinney and he had followed the gulch, which showed nowhere a vestige of water, save in the path of the spring freshets, until they had come in sight of the river; and Kinney had taken the horses on down to drink, riding one and leading the other. It would be nearly three miles to the river from where Thane had left him, but that was where all the deceptive cattle trails were tending.