 | Mrs. Skaggs's husbands, and other sketches |  |
THE LEGEND OF MONTE DEL DIABLO.
THE cautious reader will detect a lack of authenticity
in the following pages. I am not
a cautious reader myself, yet I confess with some
concern to the absence of much documentary evidence
in support of the singular incident I am
about to relate. Disjointed memoranda, the proceedings
of ayuntamientos and early departmental
juntas, with other records of a primitive and
superstitious people, have been my inadequate
authorities. It is but just to state, however, that
though this particular story lacks corroboration,
in ransacking the Spanish archives of Upper California
I have met with many more surprising and
incredible stories, attested and supported to a degree
that would have placed this legend beyond
a cavil or doubt. I have, also, never lost faith in
the legend myself, and in so doing have profited
much from the examples of divers grant-claimants,
who have often jostled me in their more practical
researches, and who have my sincere sympathy at
the scepticism of a modern hard-headed and practical
world.
For many years after Father Junipero Serro first
the spirit which animated that adventurous priest
did not wane. The conversion of the heathen
went on rapidly in the establishment of Missions
throughout the land. So sedulously did the good
Fathers set about their work, that around their
isolated chapels there presently arose adobe huts,
whose mud-plastered and savage tenants partook
regularly of the provisions, and occasionally of
the Sacrament, of their pious hosts. Nay, so great
was their progress, that one zealous Padre is reported
to have administered the Lord's Supper one
Sabbath morning to “over three hundred heathen
Salvages.” It was not to be wondered that the
Enemy of Souls, being greatly incensed thereat,
and alarmed at his decreasing popularity, should
have grievously tempted and embarrassed these
Holy Fathers, as we shall presently see.
Yet they were happy, peaceful days for California.
The vagrant keels of prying Commerce
had not as yet ruffled the lordly gravity of her
bays. No torn and ragged gulch betrayed the suspicion
of golden treasure. The wild oats drooped
idly in the morning heat, or wrestled with the
afternoon breezes. Deer and antelope dotted the
plain. The watercourses brawled in their familiar
channels, nor dreamed of ever shifting their regular
tide. The wonders of the Yosemite and Calaveras
were as yet unrecorded. The Holy Fathers noted
with which the quick soil repaid the sowing.
A new conversion, the advent of a Saint's day, or
the baptism of an Indian baby, was at once the
chronicle and marvel of their day.
At this blissful epoch there lived at the Mission
of San Pablo Father José Antonio Haro, a worthy
brother of the Society of Jesus. He was of tall
and cadaverous aspect. A somewhat romantic history
had given a poetic interest to his lugubrious
visage. While a youth, pursuing his studies at
famous Salamanca, he had become enamored of the
charms of Doña Cármen de Torrencevara, as that
lady passed to her matutinal devotions. Untoward
circumstances, hastened, perhaps, by a wealthier
suitor, brought this amour to a disastrous issue;
and Father José entered a monastery, taking upon
himself the vows of celibacy. It was here that
his natural fervor and poetic enthusiasm conceived
expression as a missionary. A longing to convert
the uncivilized heathen succeeded his frivolous
earthly passion, and a desire to explore and develop
unknown fastnesses continually possessed him. In
his flashing eye and sombre exterior was detected
a singular commingling of the discreet Las Casas
and the impetuous Balboa.
Fired by this pious zeal, Father José went forward
in the van of Christian pioneers. On reaching
Mexico, he obtained authority to establish the
accompanied only by an acolyte and muleteer, he
unsaddled his mules in a dusky cañon, and rang his
bell in the wilderness. The savages — a peaceful,
inoffensive, and inferior race — presently flocked
around him. The nearest military post was far
away, which contributed much to the security of
these pious pilgrims, who found their open trustfulness
and amiability better fitted to repress hostility
than the presence of an armed, suspicious,
and brawling soldiery. So the good Father José
said matins and prime, mass and vespers, in the
heart of Sin and Heathenism, taking no heed to
himself, but looking only to the welfare of the
Holy Church. Conversions soon followed, and, on
the 7th of July, 1760, the first Indian baby was
baptized, — an event which, as Father José piously
records, “exceeds the richnesse of gold or precious
jewels or the chancing upon the Ophir of
Solomon.” I quote this incident as best suited to
show the ingenious blending of poetry and piety
which distinguished Father José's record.
The Mission of San Pablo progressed and prospered
until the pious founder thereof, like the infidel
Alexander, might have wept that there were
no more heathen worlds to conquer. But his ardent
and enthusiastic spirit could not long brook an
idleness that seemed begotten of sin; and one
pleasant August morning, in the year of grace
the Mission building, equipped to explore the field
for new missionary labors.
Nothing could exceed the quiet gravity and unpretentiousness
of the little cavalcade. First rode
a stout muleteer, leading a pack-mule laden with
the provisions of the party, together with a few
cheap crucifixes and hawks' bells. After him came
the devout Padre José, bearing his breviary and
cross, with a black serapa thrown around his
shoulders; while on either side trotted a dusky
convert, anxious to show a proper sense of their
regeneration by acting as guides into the wilds of
their heathen brethren. Their new condition was
agreeably shown by the absence of the usual mud-plaster,
which in their unconverted state they
assumed to keep away vermin and cold. The
morning was bright and propitious. Before their
departure, mass had been said in the chapel, and
the protection of St. Ignatius invoked against all
contingent evils, but especially against bears, which,
like the fiery dragons of old, seemed to cherish unconquerable
hostility to the Holy Church.
As they wound through the cañon, charming
birds disported upon boughs and sprays, and sober
quails piped from the alders; the willowy watercourses
gave a musical utterance, and the long
grass whispered on the hillside. On entering the
deeper defiles, above them towered dark green
shook its bright scarlet berries. As they toiled
up many a steep ascent, Father José sometimes
picked up fragments of scoria, which spake to his
imagination of direful volcanoes and impending
earthquakes. To the less scientific mind of the
muleteer Ignacio they had even a more terrifying
significance; and he once or twice snuffed the air
suspiciously, and declared that it smelt of sulphur.
So the first day of their journey wore away, and
at night they encamped without having met a single
heathen face.
It was on this night that the Enemy of Souls
appeared to Ignacio in an appalling form. He
had retired to a secluded part of the camp and
had sunk upon his knees in prayerful meditation,
when he looked up and perceived the Arch-Fiend
in the likeness of a monstrous bear. The Evil
One was seated on his hind legs immediately before
him, with his fore paws joined together just
below his black muzzle. Wisely conceiving this
remarkable attitude to be in mockery and derision
of his devotions, the worthy muleteer was transported
with fury. Seizing an arquebuse, he instantly
closed his eyes and fired. When he had
recovered from the effects of the terrific discharge,
the apparition had disappeared. Father José, awakened
by the report, reached the spot only in time
to chide the muleteer for wasting powder and ball
been sufficient to utterly discomfit. What further
reliance he placed on Ignacio's story is not known;
but, in commemoration of a worthy California
custom, the place was called La Cañada de la
Tentacion del Pio Muletero, or “The Glen of the
Temptation of the Pious Muleteer,” a name which
it retains to this day.
The next morning the party, issuing from a narrow
gorge, came upon a long valley, sear and burnt
with the shadeless heat. Its lower extremity was
lost in a fading line of low hills, which, gathering
might and volume toward the upper end of the
valley, upheaved a stupendous bulwark against
the breezy North. The peak of this awful spur
was just touched by a fleecy cloud that shifted to
and fro like a banneret. Father José gazed at
it with mingled awe and admiration. By a singular
coincidence, the muleteer Ignacio uttered the
simple ejaculation “Diablo!”
As they penetrated the valley, they soon began
to miss the agreeable life and companionable echoes
of the cañon they had quitted. Huge fissures in
the parched soil seemed to gape as with thirsty
mouths. A few squirrels darted from the earth,
and disappeared as mysteriously before the jingling
mules. A gray wolf trotted leisurely along
just ahead. But whichever way Father José
turned, the mountain always asserted itself and
arid valley, it seemed to spring into cooler and
bracing life. Deep cavernous shadows dwelt along
its base; rocky fastnesses appeared midway of its
elevation; and on either side huge black hills
diverged like massy roots from a central trunk.
His lively fancy pictured these hills peopled with
a majestic and intelligent race of savages; and
looking into futurity, he already saw a monstrous
cross crowning the dome-like summit. Far different
were the sensations of the muleteer, who saw
in those awful solitudes only fiery dragons, colossal
bears and break-neck trails. The converts, Concepcion
and Incarnacion, trotting modestly beside
the Padre, recognized, perhaps, some manifestation
of their former weird mythology.
At nightfall they reached the base of the mountain.
Here Father José unpacked his mules, said
vespers, and, formally ringing his bell, called upon
the Gentiles within hearing to come and accept
the Holy Faith. The echoes of the black frowning
hills around him caught up the pious invitation,
and repeated it at intervals; but no Gentiles appeared
that night. Nor were the devotions of the
muleteer again disturbed, although he afterward
asserted, that, when the Father's exhortation was
ended, a mocking peal of laughter came from the
mountain. Nothing daunted by these intimations
of the near hostility of the Evil One, Father José
early dawn; and before the sun rose the next
morning he was leading the way.
The ascent was in many places difficult and
dangerous. Huge fragments of rock often lay
across the trail, and after a few hours' climbing
they were forced to leave their mules in a little
gully, and continue the ascent afoot. Unaccustomed
to such exertion, Father José often stopped
to wipe the perspiration from his thin cheeks. As
the day wore on, a strange silence oppressed them.
Except the occasional pattering of a squirrel, or a
rustling in the chimisal bushes, there were no signs
of life. The half-human print of a bear's foot
sometimes appeared before them, at which Ignacio
always crossed himself piously. The eye was
sometimes cheated by a dripping from the rocks,
which on closer inspection proved to be a resinous
oily liquid with an abominable sulphurous smell.
When they were within a short distance of the
summit, the discreet Ignacio, selecting a sheltered
nook for the camp, slipped aside and busied himself
in preparations for the evening, leaving the
Holy Father to continue the ascent alone. Never
was there a more thoughtless act of prudence,
never a more imprudent piece of caution. Without
noticing the desertion, buried in pious reflection,
Father José pushed mechanically on, and,
reaching the summit, cast himself down and gazed
upon the prospect.
Below him lay a succession of valleys opening
into each other like gentle lakes, until they were
lost to the southward. Westerly the distant range
hid the bosky cañada which sheltered the mission
of San Pablo. In the farther distance the Pacific
Ocean stretched away, bearing a cloud of fog upon
its bosom, which crept through the entrance of the
bay, and rolled thickly between him and the northeastward;
the same fog hid the base of mountain
and the view beyond. Still, from time to time the
fleecy veil parted, and timidly disclosed charming
glimpses of mighty rivers, mountain defiles, and
rolling plains, sear with ripened oats, and bathed
in the glow of the setting sun. As Father José
gazed, he was penetrated with a pious longing.
Already his imagination, filled with enthusiastic
conceptions, beheld all that vast expanse gathered
under the mild sway of the Holy Faith, and peopled
with zealous converts. Each little knoll in
fancy became crowned with a chapel; from each
dark cañon gleamed the white walls of a mission
building. Growing bolder in his enthusiasm, and
looking farther into futurity, he beheld a new
Spain rising on these savage shores. He already
saw the spires of stately cathedrals, the domes of
palaces, vineyards, gardens, and groves. Convents,
half hid among the hills, peeping from plantations
of branching limes; and long processions of chanting
nuns wound through the defiles. So completely
future confounded with the past, that even in their
choral strain the well-remembered accents of Cármen
struck his ear. He was busied in these fanciful
imaginings, when suddenly over that extended
prospect the faint, distant tolling of a bell rang
sadly out and died. It was the Angelus. Father
José listened with superstitious exaltation. The
mission of San Pablo was far away, and the sound
must have been some miraculous omen. But never
before, to his enthusiastic sense, did the sweet seriousness
of this angelic symbol come with such
strange significance. With the last faint peal, his
glowing fancy seemed to cool; the fog closed in
below him, and the good Father remembered he
had not had his supper. He had risen and was
wrapping his serapa around him, when he perceived
for the first time that he was not alone.
Nearly opposite, and where should have been
the faithless Ignacio, a grave and decorous figure
was seated. His appearance was that of an elderly
hidalgo, dressed in mourning, with mustaches of
iron-gray carefully waxed and twisted around a
pair of lantern-jaws. The monstrous hat and prodigious
feather, the enormous ruff and exaggerated
trunk-hose, contrasted with a frame shrivelled and
wizened, all belonged to a century previous. Yet
Father José was not astonished. His adventurous
life and poetic imagination, continually on the
advantage over the practical and material minded.
He instantly detected the diabolical quality of his
visitant, and was prepared. With equal coolness
and courtesy he met the cavalier's obeisance.
“I ask your pardon, Sir Priest,” said the stranger,
“for disturbing your meditations. Pleasant
they must have been, and right fanciful, I imagine,
when occasioned by so fair a prospect.”
“Worldly, perhaps, Sir Devil, — for such I take
you to be,” said the Holy Father, as the stranger
bowed his black plumes to the ground; “worldly,
perhaps; for it hath pleased Heaven to retain even
in our regenerated state much that pertaineth to
the flesh, yet still, I trust, not without some speculation
for the welfare of the Holy Church. In
dwelling upon yon fair expanse, mine eyes have
been graciously opened with prophetic inspiration,
and the promise of the heathen as an inheritance
hath marvellously recurred to me. For there can
be none lack such diligence in the True Faith,
but may see that even the conversion of these
pitiful salvages hath a meaning. As the blessed
St. Ignatius discreetly observes,” continued Father
José, clearing his throat and slightly elevating his
voice, “`the heathen is given to the warriors of
Christ, even as the pearls of rare discovery which
gladden the hearts of shipmen.' Nay, I might
say —”
But here the stranger, who had been wrinkling
his brows and twisting his mustaches with well-bred
patience, took advantage of an oratorical
pause: —
“It grieves me, Sir Priest, to interrupt the current
of your eloquence as discourteously as I have
already broken your meditations; but the day already
waneth to night. I have a matter of serious
import to make with you, could I entreat your
cautious consideration a few moments.”
Father José hesitated. The temptation was
great, and the prospect of acquiring some knowledge
of the Great Enemy's plans not the least
trifling object. And if the truth must be told,
there was a certain decorum about the stranger
that interested the Padre. Though well aware of
the Protean shapes the Arch-Fiend could assume,
and though free from the weaknesses of the flesh,
Father José was not above the temptations of the
spirit. Had the Devil appeared, as in the case of
the pious St. Anthony, in the likeness of a comely
damsel, the good Father, with his certain experience
of the deceitful sex, would have whisked her
away in the saying of a paternoster. But there
was, added to the security of age, a grave sadness
about the stranger, — a thoughtful consciousness
as of being at a great moral disadvantage, — which
at once decided him on a magnanimous course of
conduct.
The stranger then proceeded to inform him, that
he had been diligently observing the Holy Father's
triumphs in the valley. That, far from being greatly
exercised thereat, he had been only grieved to
see so enthusiastic and chivalrous an antagonist
wasting his zeal in a hopeless work. For, he observed,
the issue of the great battle of Good and
Evil had been otherwise settled, as he would presently
show him. “It wants but a few moments
of night,” he continued, “and over this interval of
twilight, as you know, I have been given complete
control. Look to the West.”
As the Padre turned, the stranger took his enormous
hat from his head, and waved it three times
before him. At each sweep of the prodigious
feather, the fog grew thinner, until it melted impalpably
away, and the former landscape returned,
yet warm with the glowing sun. As Father José
gazed, a strain of martial music arose from the
valley, and issuing from a deep cañon, the good
Father beheld a long cavalcade of gallant cavaliers,
habited like his companion. As they swept down
the plain, they were joined by like processions,
that slowly defiled from every ravine and cañon of
the mysterious mountain. From time to time the
peal of a trumpet swelled fitfully upon the breeze;
the cross of Santiago glittered, and the royal banners
of Castile and Aragon waved over the moving
column. So they moved on solemnly toward the
caravels, bearing the same familiar banner, awaiting
them. The good Padre gazed with conflicting
emotions, and the serious voice of the stranger
broke the silence.
“Thou hast beheld, Sir Priest, the fading footprints
of adventurous Castile. Thou hast seen the
declining glory of old Spain, — declining as yonder
brilliant sun. The sceptre she hath wrested
from the heathen is fast dropping from her decrepit
and fleshless grasp. The children she hath
fostered shall know her no longer. The soil she
hath acquired shall be lost to her as irrevocably as
she herself hath thrust the Moor from her own
Granada.”
The stranger paused, and his voice seemed
broken by emotion; at the same time, Father José,
whose sympathizing heart yearned toward the departing
banners, cried in poignant accents, —
“Farewell, ye gallant cavaliers and Christian soldiers!
Farewell, thou, Nuñes de Balboa! thou,
Alonzo de Ojeda! and thou, most venerable Las
Casas! Farewell, and may Heaven prosper still
the seed ye left behind!”
Then turning to the stranger, Father José beheld
him gravely draw his pocket-handkerchief
from the basket-hilt of his rapier, and apply it
decorously to his eyes.
“Pardon this weakness, Sir Priest,” said the
were ancient friends of mine, and have done
me many a delicate service, — much more, perchance,
than these poor sables may signify,” he
added, with a grim gesture toward the mourning
suit he wore.
Father José was too much preoccupied in reflection
to notice the equivocal nature of this tribute,
and, after a few moments' silence, said, as if continuing
his thought, —
“But the seed they have planted shall thrive
and prosper on this fruitful soil.”
As if answering the interrogatory, the stranger
turned to the opposite direction, and, again waving
his hat, said, in the same serious tone, —
“Look to the East!”
The Father turned, and, as the fog broke away
before the waving plume, he saw that the sun was
rising. Issuing with its bright beams through the
passes of the snowy mountains beyond, appeared a
strange and motley crew. Instead of the dark and
romantic visages of his last phantom train, the
Father beheld with strange concern the blue eyes
and flaxen hair of a Saxon race. In place of
martial airs and musical utterance, there rose upon
the ear a strange din of harsh gutturals and singular
sibilation. Instead of the decorous tread
and stately mien of the cavaliers of the former
vision, they came pushing, bustling, panting, and
noticed that giant trees were prostrated as with
the breath of a tornado, and the bowels of the
earth were torn and rent as with a convulsion.
And Father José looked in vain for holy cross or
Christian symbol; there was but one that seemed
an ensign, and he crossed himself with holy horror
as he perceived it bore the effigy of a bear.
“Who are these swaggering Ishmaelites?” he
asked, with something of asperity in his tone.
The stranger was gravely silent.
“What do they here, with neither cross nor holy
symbol?” he again demanded.
“Have you the courage to see, Sir Priest?” responded
the stranger, quietly.
Father José felt his crucifix, as a lonely traveller
might his rapier, and assented.
“Step under the shadow of my plume,” said the
stranger.
Father José stepped beside him, and they instantly
sank through the earth.
When he opened his eyes, which had remained
closed in prayerful meditation during his rapid descent,
he found himself in a vast vault, bespangled
overhead with luminous points like the starred firmament.
It was also lighted by a yellow glow that
seemed to proceed from a mighty sea or lake that
occupied the centre of the chamber. Around this
subterranean sea dusky figures flitted, bearing
replenished from its depths. From this lake
diverging streams of the same mysterious flood
penetrated like mighty rivers the cavernous distance.
As they walked by the banks of this glittering
Styx, Father José perceived how the liquid
stream at certain places became solid. The ground
was strewn with glittering flakes. One of these
the Padre picked up and curiously examined. It
was virgin gold.
An expression of discomfiture overcast the good
Father's face at this discovery; but there was
trace neither of malice nor satisfaction in the stranger's
air, which was still of serious and fateful contemplation.
When Father José recovered his
equanimity, he said, bitterly, —
“This, then, Sir Devil, is your work! This is
your deceitful lure for the weak souls of sinful nations!
So would you replace the Christian grace
of holy Spain!”
“This is what must be,” returned the stranger,
gloomily. “But listen, Sir Priest. It lies with
you to avert the issue for a time. Leave me here
in peace. Go back to Castile, and take with you
your bells, your images, and your missions. Continue
here, and you only precipitate results. Stay!
promise me you will do this, and you shall not
lack that which will render your old age an ornament
and a blessing”; and the stranger motioned
significantly to the lake.
It was here, the legend discreetly relates, that the
Devil showed — as he always shows sooner or later
— his cloven hoof. The worthy Padre, sorely perplexed
by his threefold vision, and, if the truth
must be told, a little nettled at this wresting away
of the glory of holy Spanish discovery, had shown
some hesitation. But the unlucky bribe of the
Enemy of Souls touched his Castilian spirit.
Starting back in deep disgust, he brandished his
crucifix in the face of the unmasked Fiend, and
in a voice that made the dusky vault resound,
cried, —
“Avaunt thee, Sathanas! Diabolus, I defy thee!
What! wouldst thou bribe me, — me, a brother of
the Sacred Society of the Holy Jesus, Licentiate
of Cordova and Inquisitor of Guadalaxara?
Thinkest thou to buy me with thy sordid treasure?
Avaunt!”
What might have been the issue of this rupture,
and how complete might have been the triumph
of the Holy Father over the Arch-Fiend, who was
recoiling aghast at these sacred titles and the
flourishing symbol, we can never know, for at that
moment the crucifix slipped through his fingers.
Scarcely had it touched the ground before Devil
and Holy Father simultaneously cast themselves
toward it. In the struggle they clinched, and the
pious José, who was as much the superior of his
antagonist in bodily as in spiritual strength, was
somersault, when he suddenly felt the long nails
of the stranger piercing his flesh. A new fear
seized his heart, a numbing chillness crept through
his body, and he struggled to free himself, but in
vain. A strange roaring was in his ears; the lake
and cavern danced before his eyes and vanished;
and with a loud cry he sank senseless to the
ground.
When he recovered his consciousness he was
aware of a gentle swaying motion of his body. He
opened his eyes, and saw it was high noon, and
that he was being carried in a litter through the
valley. He felt stiff, and, looking down, perceived
that his arm was tightly bandaged to his side.
He closed his eyes and after a few words of
thankful prayer, thought how miraculously he had
been preserved, and made a vow of candlesticks to
the blessed Saint José. He then called in a faint
voice, and presently the penitent Ignacio stood
beside him.
The joy the poor fellow felt at his patron's returning
consciousness for some time choked his
utterance. He could only ejaculate, “A miracle!
Blessed Saint José, he lives!” and kiss the Padre's
bandaged hand. Father José, more intent on his
last night's experience, waited for his emotion to
subside, and asked where he had been found.
“On the mountain, your reverence, but a few
varas from where he attacked you.”
“How? — you saw him then?” asked the Padre,
in unfeigned astonishment.
“Saw him, your Reverence! Mother of God, I
should think I did! And your Reverence shall see
him too, if he ever comes again within range of
Ignacio's arquebuse.”
“What mean you, Ignacio?” said the Padre,
sitting bolt-upright in his litter.
“Why, the bear, your Reverence, — the bear,
Holy Father, who attacked your worshipful person
while you were meditating on the top of yonder
mountain.”
“Ah!” said the Holy Father, lying down again.
“Chut, child! I would be at peace.”
When he reached the Mission, he was tenderly
cared for, and in a few weeks was enabled to resume
those duties from which, as will be seen, not
even the machinations of the Evil One could divert
him. The news of his physical disaster spread
over the country; and a letter to the Bishop of
Guadalaxara contained a confidential and detailed
account of the good Father's spiritual temptation.
But in some way the story leaked out; and long
after José was gathered to his fathers, his mysterious
encounter formed the theme of thrilling and
whispered narrative. The mountain was generally
shunned. It is true that Señor Joaquin Pedrillo
afterward located a grant near the base of the
mountain; but as Señora Pedrillo was known to be
to be over-fastidious.
Such is the Legend of Monte del Diablo. As I
said before, it may seem to lack essential corroboration.
The discrepancy between the Father's narrative
and the actual climax has given rise to some
scepticism on the part of ingenious quibblers. All
such I would simply refer to that part of the report
of Señor Julio Serro, Sub-Prefect of San Pablo,
before whom attest of the above was made.
Touching this matter, the worthy Prefect observes,
“That although the body of Father José doth
show evidence of grievous conflict in the flesh, yet
that is no proof that the Enemy of Souls, who could
assume the figure of a decorous elderly caballero,
could not at the same time transform himself into
a bear for his own vile purposes.”
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