It had been raining in the valley of the Sacramento. The North Fork had overflowed its banks, and Rattlesnake Creek was impassable. The few boulders that had marked the summer ford at Simpson’s Crossing were obliterated by a vast sheet of water stretching to the foothills. The upstage was stopped at Granger’s; the last mail had been abandoned on the tules, the rider swimming for his life. “An area,” remarked the “Sierra Avalanche,” with pensive local pride, “as large as the State of Massachusetts is now under water.”

Harte, as the General had decided, was thinking of the great floods of ’61, which had transformed the whole valley into a lake. Since Massachusetts contains over eight thousand square miles and the plains area of the Sacramento Valley not much in excess of five thousand, the General had sometimes suggested that the local editor was exaggerating, but remembering that much of the adjoining San Joaquin Valley must have been flooded at the same time, he always admitted in the end that the editor may have been within the limits of accuracy.

The General was professionally interested because, roughly speaking, he was responsible that it did not happen again, at least not without warning.

When he got to his office that afternoon, he found that his secretary had received and codified the rainfall reports from all the stations in the Sacramento drainage system. The General glanced at the record—moderately heavy everywhere, nothing startling, heaviest in the Feather River basin with Pulga reporting ninety-eight hundredths in twelve hours. He had no great interest in the immediate situation; this first rain would mostly sink into the ground, and yield little run-off.

Sitting at his desk, he looked with satisfaction at the map on the wall in front of him. It represented the Valley. Ramifying pairs of parallel black lines indicated levees. Blue coloring between the black lines showed the regular river channels. But paralleling these blue channels were even broader spaces of red; these were the by-passes into which the flood water spilled—great auxiliary rivers. There were also green-colored areas, representing regions which must be allowed to flood in times of very high water in order to lower the level and prevent a more serious break elsewhere.

The General liked to explain matters in military terms. “The blue is enemy country. If he attacks strongly enough, we give ground and he takes over the red territory; if that doesn’t hold him, we yield the green, and then put up our last fight along the levees to hold the white.”