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Collection: Books and Periodicals

Three Years in California by John D. Borthwick (1857)(LoC) (423 pages)

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THE PLAINS UNDER WATER. which occurred to me on beholding it was that of rheumatism, and the second fever and ague; but I was glad to find myself here, nevertheless, if only to experience once more the sensation of having on dry clothes. I learned that several men had been drowned on different parts of the plains in attempting to cross some of the immense pools or sloughs such as we had passed on our way; while cattle and horses were drowned in numbers, and were dying of starvation on insulated spots, from which there was no escape. I saw plenty of this, however, the next day in going down by the steamboat to Sacramento. The distance is fifty or sixty miles through the plains all the way, but they had now more the appearance of a vast inland sea. It would have been difficult to keep to the channel of the river, had it not been for the trees appearing on each side, and the numbers of squatters’ shanties generally built on a spot where the bank was high and showed itself above water, though in many cases nothing but the roof of the cabin could be seen. On the tops of the cabins and sheds, on piles of firewood, or up in the trees, were fowls calmly waiting their doom; while pigs, cows, and horses were all huddled up together, knee-deep in water, on any little rising-ground which offered standingroom, dying by inches from inanition. The squat-