For the few inhabitants who calmly and methodically
moved to higher ground, camping out in tents until the flood
had subsided, left no distracting wreckage behind them. A dozen
half-submerged log cabins dotted the tranquil surface of the waters,
without ripple or disturbance, looking in the moonlight more like the
ruins of centuries than of a few days. There was no current to sap their
slight foundations or sweep them away; nothing stirred that silent lake
but the occasional shot-like indentations of a passing raindrop, or,
still more rarely, a raft, made of a single log, propelled by some
citizen on a tour of inspection of his cabin roof-tree, where some of
his goods were still stored. There was no sense of terror in this bland
obliteration of the little settlement; the ruins of a single burnt-up
cabin would have been more impressive than this stupid and even
grotesquely placid effect of the rival destroying element. People took
it naturally; the water went as it had come,--slowly, impassively,
noiselessly; a few days of fervid Californian sunshine dried the cabins,
and in a week or two the red dust lay again as thickly before their
doors as the winter mud had lain.
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