These spring rivers of the north are of course shorter than those of the
south whose tributaries extend up to the tops of the mountains. Fall
River, an important tributary of the Pitt or Upper Sacramento, is only
about ten miles long, and is all falls, cascades, and springs from its
head to its confluence with the Pitt. Bountiful springs, charmingly
embowered, issue from the rocks at one end of it, a snowy fall a hundred
and eighty feet high thunders at the other, and a rush of crystal rapids
sing and dance between. Of course such streams are but little affected
by the weather. Sheltered from evaporation their flow is nearly as full
in the autumn as in the time of general spring floods. While those of
the high Sierra diminish to less than the hundredth part of their
springtime prime, shallowing in autumn to a series of silent pools among
the rocks and hollows of their channels, connected by feeble, creeping
threads of water, like the sluggish sentences of a tired writer,
connected by a drizzle of "ands" and "buts." Strange to say, the
greatest floods occur in winter, when one would suppose all the wild
waters would be muffled and chained in frost and snow.
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