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The rainy season had destroyed all the dams constructed on the gold rivers and raceways, which had been constructed at great expense for the purpose of working the beds of the river for gold, the rivers often rising from ten to eighteen feet in a night, and the current running with terrible force.
The first miners, when they found gold on the banks of the river, thought if they could only dig in the deep holes of the bed they would find chunks of it, and they went to a big expense, and those who had money hired laborers to assist in constructing raceways at $16 per day, to change the current of the river; but when they had effected their object and dug there they found no gold, for there was nothing to prevent the strong current from carrying it off; but I knew a party to draw off the water and expose the bed of the river, where there were rapids, and they were successful, and the gold had settled down between the crevices of the rocks, and the currents could not disturb it.
The French fur-traders placed a mill beside the upper rapids, and the early British settlers built another to saw the timher used in their stockades. By-and-by, the Stedman and Porter mills were established below the Falls; and subsequently, others which derived their water-supply from the lower rapids by means of raceways or leads.
Farms were lakes, roads were raceways through which raced the swollen streams. Telegraph service was maimed, and all sorts of communication was well-nigh impossible. Crowded in the upper stories of tall office buildings and residences, two miles each way from the center of the town, were thousands of persons whom it was impossible to approach.
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