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LEGENDS AND TALES.
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 skepticism 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 provisious,
and ocoasionally 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
yes, 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 water-courses
brawled in their familiar channels, nor
dreamed of ever shifting their regular tide. The
wonders of the Yo-Semite and Calaveras were as yet
unrecorded. The Holy Fathers noted little of the
landscape beyond the barbaric prodigality with
which the quick soil repaid the sowing. A new conversion,
the advent of a Saint's day, or the baptism
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 Mission
of San Pablo. Like the good Junipero, accompanied
only by an acolyth 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.
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 ingenuous
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 1770, Father José
issued from the outer court of 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
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 water-courses
gave a musical utterance, and the long grass whispered
on the hillside. On entering the deeper defiles,
above them towered dark green masses of pine, and
occasionally the madroño 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 in
a contest with one whom a single ave would have been
sufficient to utterly discomfit. What further reliance
he placed on Ignacio's story is not known; but, in
commemoration of a worthy Californian 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
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 arrested his wandering eye. Out
of the dry 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 covnerts, 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
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 declared his intention to
ascend the mountain at 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
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 becomes 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.
plantations of branching limes; and long processions
of chanting nuns wound through the defiles. So
completely was the good Father's conception of the
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 moustaches 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 shriveled and wizened,
all belonged to a century previous. Yet Father José
was not astonished. His adventurous life and poetic
imagination, continually on the look-out for the marvelous,
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 marvelously recurred
to me. For there can be none lack such diligence
in the True Faith, but may see that even the conversion
of these pititul 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 moustaches with well-bred
patience, took advantage of an oratorical pause to
“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 threat, 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
“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
issued 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 sea, where, in the
distance, Father José saw stately 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 spectre she hath wrested from the
heathen is fast dropping from her decrepit and fleshless
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 cavalier,
apologetically; “but these worthy gentlemen
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 swaggering. And as they passed, the
good Father 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 traveler
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
over-head 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 ladles
filled with the yellow fluid, which they had 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
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 to
pious José, who was as much the superior of his antagonist
in bodily as in spiritual strength, was about
to treat the Great Adversary to a back 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 a termagant half-breed, the
Señor was not supposed 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
skepticism 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 Jose 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.”
THE ADVENTURE OF PADRE VICENTIO.
A LEGEND OF SAN FRANCISCO.
One pleasant New Year's Eve, about forty years
ago, Padre Vicentio was slowly picking his way
across the sand-hills from the Mission Dolores. As
he climbed the crest of the ridge beside Mission
Creek, his broad, shining face might have been easily
mistaken for the beneficent image of the rising moon,
so bland was its smile and so indefinite its features.
For the padre was a man of notable reputation and
character; his ministration at the Mission of San
José had been marked with cordiality and unction;
he was adored by the simple-minded savages, and
had succeeded in impressing his individuality so
strongly upon them that the very children were said
to have miraculously resembled him in feature.
As the holy man reached the loneliest portion of
the road, he naturally put spurs to his mule as if to
quicken that decorous pace which the obedient animal
had acquired through long experience of its
reputation. Sailors—deserters from whaleships—
had been seen lurking about the outskirts of the
town, and low scrub oaks which everywhere beset
the trail might have easily concealed some desperate
runaway. Besides these material obstructions, the
devil, whose hostility to the church was well known,
was said to sometimes haunt the vicinity in the likeness
of a spectral whaler, who had met his death in a
drunken bout, from a harpoon in the hands of a
companion. The ghost of this unfortunate mariner
was frequently observed sitting on the hill toward
the dusk of evening, armed with his favorite weapon
and a tub containing a coil of line, looking out for
some belated traveler on whom to exercise his professional
skill. It is related that the good father
José Maria of the Mision Dolores had been twice attacked
by this phantom sportsman; that once, on
returning from San Francisco, and panting with exertion
from climbing the hill, he was startled by a
stentorian cry of “There she blows!” quickly followed
by a hurtling harpoon, which buried itself in
the sand beside him; that on another occasion he
narrowly escaped destruction, his serapa having been
transfixed by the diabolical harpoon and dragged
away in triumph. Popular opinion seems to have
been divided as to the reason for the devil's particular
attention to Father José, some asserting that the
extreme piety of the padre excited the Evil One's
animosity, and others that his adipose tendency simply
rendered him, from a professional view-point, a
profitable capture.
Had Father Vicentio been inclined to scoff at this
apparition as a heretical innovation, there was still
the story of Concepcion, the Demon Vaquero, whose
terrible riata was fully as potent as the whaler's harpoon.
Concepcion, when in the flesh, had been a
celebrated herder of cattle and wild horses, and was
reported to have chased the devil in the shape of a
fleet pinto colt all the way from San Luis Obispo to
San Francisco, vowing not to give up the chase until
he had overtaken the disguised Arch-Enemy. This
the devil prevented by resuming his own shape, but
kept the unfortunate vaquero to the fulfillment of his
rash vow; and Concepcion still scoured the coast on
a phantom steed, beguiling the monotony of his eternal
pursuit by lassoing travelers, dragging them at
the heels of his unbroken mustang until they were
eventually picked up, half-strangled, by the road-side.
The padre listened attentively for the tramp of this
terrible rider. But no footfall broke the stillness of
the night; even the hoofs of his own mule sank
noiselessly in the shifting sand. Now and then a
rabbit bounded lightly by him, or a quail ran into
the brush. The melancholy call of plover from the
adjoining marshes of Mission Creek came to him so
faintly and fitfully that it seemed almost a recollection
of the past rather than a reality of the present.
To add to his discomposure one of those heavy sea
fogs peculiar to the locality began to drift across the
hills and presently encompassed him. While endeavoring
to evade its cold embraces, Padre Vicentio
his mule as that puzzled animal was hesitating on
the brink of a steep declivity. Whether the poor
beast was indignant at this novel outrage, or had
been for some time reflecting on the evils of being
priest-ridden, has not transpired; enough that he
suddenly threw up his heels, pitching the reverend
man over his head, and, having accomplished this
feat, coolly dropped on his knees and tumbled after
his rider.
Over and over went the padre, closely followed by
his faithless mule. Luckily the little hollow which
received the pair was of sand that yielded to the
superincumbent weight, half burying them without
further injury. For some moments the poor man
lay motionless, vainly endeavoring to collect his
scattered senses. A hand irreverently laid upon his
collar, and a rough shake, assisted to recall his consciousness.
As the padre staggered to his feet he
found himself confronted by a stranger.
Seen dimly through the fog, and under circumstances
that to say the least were not prepossessing,
the new comer had an inexpressibly mysterious and
brigand-like aspect. A long boat-cloak concealed
his figure, and a slouched hat hid his features, permitting
only his eyes to glisten in the depths. With
a deep groan the padre slipped from the stranger's
grasp and subsided into the soft sand again.
“Gad's life!” said the stranger, pettishly, “hast no
more bones in thy fat carcass than a jelly-fish?
Lend a hand, here! Yo, heave ho!” and he dragged
and what art thou?”
The padre could not help thinking that the question
might have more properly been asked by himself;
but with an odd mixture of dignity and trepidation
he began enumerating his different titles,
which were by no means brief, and would have been
alone sufficient to strike awe in the bosom of an ordinary
adversary. The stranger irreverently broke
in upon his formal phrases, and assuring him that a
priest was the very person he was looking for, coolly
replaced the old man's hat, which had tumbled off,
and bade him accompany him at once on an errand
of spiritual counsel to one who was even then lying
in extremity. “To think,” said the stranger, “that
I should stumble upon the very man I was seeking!
Body of Bacchus! but this is lucky! Follow me
quickly, for there is no time to lose.”
Like most easy natures the positive assertion of the
stranger, and withal a certain authoritative air of
command, overcame what slight objections the padre
might have feebly nurtured during this remarkable
interview. The spiritual invitation was one, also,
that he dared not refuse; not only that; but it tended
somewhat to remove the superstitious dread with
which he had begun to regard the mysterious stranger.
Following at a respectful distance, the padre
could not help observing with a thrill of horror that
the stranger's footsteps made no impression on the
sand, and his figure seemed at times to blend and incorporate
itself with the fog, until the holy man was
intervals of embarrassment he heard the ringing of
the far-off Mission bell, proclaiming the hour of midnight.
Scarcely had the last stroke died away before
the announcement was taken up and repeated
by a multitude of bells of all sizes, and the air was
filled with the sound of striking clocks and the pealing
of steeple chimes. The old man uttered a cry
of alarm. The stranger sharply demanded the cause.
“The bells! did you not hear them?” gasped Padre
Vicentio. “Tush! tush!” answered the stranger,
“thy fall hath set triple bob-majors ringing in thine
ears. Come on!”
The padre was only too glad to accept the explanation
conveyed in this discourteous answer. But he
was destined for another singular experience. When
they had reached the summit of the eminence now
known as Russian Hill, an exclamation again burst
from the padre. The stranger turned to his companion
with an impatient gesture; but the padre
heeded him not. The view that burst upon his sight
was such as might well have engrossed the attention
of a more enthusiastic nature. The fog had not yet
reached the hill, and the long valleys and hillsides
of the embarcadero below were glittering with the
light of a populous city. “Look!” said the padre,
stretching his hand over the spreading landscape.
“Look, dost thou not see the stately squares and
brilliantly-lighted avenues of a mighty metropolis.
Dost thou not see, as it were, another firmament
below?”
“Avast heaving, reverend man, and quit this
folly,” said the stranger, dragging the bewildered
padre after him. “Behold rather the stars knocked
out of thy hollow noddle by the fall thou hast had.
Prithee, get over thy visions and rhapsodies, for the
time is nearing apace.”
The padre humbly followed without another word.
Descending the hill toward the north, the stranger
leading the way, in a few moments the padre detected
the wash of waves, and presently his feet
struck the firmer sand of the beach. Here the stranger
paused, and the padre perceived a boat lying in
readiness hard by. As he stepped into the stern-sheets,
in obedience to the command of his companion,
he noticed that the rowers seemed to partake
of the misty incorporeal texture of his companion, a
similarity that became the more distressing when he
also perceived that their oars in pulling together made
no noise. The stranger, assuming the helm, guided
the boat on quietly, while the fog, settling over the
face of the water and closingaround them, seemed to
interpose a muffled wall between themselves and the
rude jarring of the outer world. As they pushed
further into this penetralia, the padre listened anxiously
for the sound of creaking blocks and the rattling
of cordage, but no vibration broke the veiled stillness
or disturbed the warm breath of the fleecy fog.
Only one incident occurred to break the monotony
of their mysterious journey. A one-eyed rower,
who sat in front of the padre, catching the devout
father's eye, immediately grinned such a ghastly
intensity of meaning that the padre was constrained
to utter a pious ejaculation, which had the
disastrous effect of causing the marine Cocles to
“catch a crab,” throwing his heels in the air and his
head into the bottom of the boat. But even this accident
did not disturb the gravity of the rest of the
ghastly boat's crew.
When, as it seemed to the padre, ten minutes had
elapsed, the outline of a large ship loomed up directly
across their bow. Before he could utter the cry of
warning that rose to his lips, or brace himself against
the expected shock, the boat passed gently and noiselessly
through the sides of the vessel, and the holy
man found himself standing on the berth deck of
what seemed to be an ancient caravel. The boat and
boat's crew had vanished. Only his mysterious
friend, the stranger, remained. By the light of a
swinging lamp the padre beheld him standing beside
a hammock, whereon, apparently, lay the dying man
to whom he had been so mysteriously summoned.
As the padre, in obedience to a sign from his companion,
stepped to the side of the sufferer, he feebly
opened his eyes and thus addressed him:
“Thou seest before thee, reverend father, a helpless
mortal, struggling not only with the last agonies
of the flesh, but beaten down and tossed with sore
anguish of the spirit. It matters little when or how
I became what thou now seest me. Enough that my
life has been ungodly and sinful, and that my only
hope of thy absolution lies in my imparting to thee a
Church, and affects greatly her power, wealth and
dominion on these shores. But the terms of this
secret and the conditions of my absolution are peculiar.
I have but five minutes to live. In that time
I must receive the extreme unction of the Church.”
“And thy secret?” said the holy father.
“Shall be told afterwards,” answered the dying
man. “Come, my time is short. Shrive me quickly.”
The padre hesitated. “Couldst thou not tell this
secret first?”
“Impossible!” said the dying man, with what
seemed to the padre a momentary gleam of triumph.
Then as his breath grew feebler he called impatiently,
“shrive me! shrive me!”
“Let me know at least what this secret concerns?”
suggested the padre, insinuatingly.
“Shrive me first,” said the dying man.
But the priest still hesitated, parleying with the
sufferer until the ship's bell struck, when, with a triumphant,
mocking laugh from the stranger, the
vessel suddenly fell to pieces, amid the rushing of
waters which at once involved the dying man, the
priest, and the mysterious stranger.
The padre did not recover his consciousness until
high noon the next day, when he found himself lying
in a little hollow between the Mission Hills, and his
faithful mule a few paces from him, cropping the
sparse herbage. The padre made the best of his way
home, but wisely abstained from narrating the facts
when the whole of this veracious incident was related,
with the assertion of the padre that the secret
which was thus mysteriously snatched from his possession
was nothing more than the discovery of gold,
years since, by the runaway sailors from the expedition
of Sir Francis Drake.
THE LEGEND OF DEVIL'S POINT.
On the northerly shore of San Francisco Bay, at a
point where the Golden Gate broadens into the Pacific
stands a bluff promontory. It affords shelter from
the prevailing winds to a semicircular bay on the
East. Around this bay the hillside is bleak and barren,
but there are traces of former habitation in a
weather-beaten cabin and deserted corral. It is said
that these were originally built by an enterprising
squatter, who for some unaccountable reason abandoned
them shortly after. The “Jumper” who succeeded
him disappeared one day, quite mysteriously.
The third tenant, who seemed to be a man of
sanguine, hopeful temperament, divided the property
into building lots, staked off the hill-side, and projected
the map of a new metropolis. Failing, however,
to convince the citizens of San Francisco that
they had mistaken the site of their city, he presently
fell into dissipation and despondency. He was frequently
at low tide, or perched upon the cliff at highwater.
In the latter position a sheep-tender one day found
him, cold and pulseless, with a map of his property
in his hand, and his face turned toward the distant
sea.
Perhaps these circumstances gave the locality its
infelicitous reputation. Vague rumors were bruited
of a supernatural influence that had been exercised
on the tenants. Strange stories were circulated of
the origin of the diabolical title by which the promontory
was known. By some it was believed to be
haunted by the spirit of one of Sir Francis Drake's
sailors who had deserted his ship in consequence of
stories told by the Indians of gold discoveries, but
who had perished by starvation on the rocks. A
vaquero who had once passed a night in the ruined
cabin, related how a strangely-dressed and emaciated
figure had knocked at the door at midnight and
demanded food. Other story-tellers, of more historical
accuracy, roundly asserted that Sir Francis himself
had been little better than a pirate, and had
chosen this spot to conceal quantities of ill-gotten
booty, taken from neutral bottoms, and had protected
his hiding-place by the orthodox means of hellish
incantation and diabolic agencies. On moonlight
nights a shadowy ship was sometimes seen standing
off-and-on, or when fogs encompassed sea and shore,
the noise of oars rising and falling in their row-locks
could be heard muffled and indistinctly during the
night. Whatever foundation there might have been
desolate-looking spot could not have been selected
for their theatre. High hills, verdureless and enfiladed
with dark cañadas, cast their gaunt shadows on the
tide. During a greater portion of the day the wind,
which blew furiously and incessantly, seemed possessed
with a spirit of fierce disquiet and unrest.
Toward nightfall the sea-fog crept with soft step
through the portals of the Golden Gate, or stole in noiseless
marches down the hillside, tenderly soothing the
wind-buffeted face of the cliff, until sea and sky
were hid together. At such times the populous city
beyond and the nearer settlement seemed removed
to an infinite distance. An immeasurable loneliness
settled upon the cliff. The creaking of a windlass,
or the monotonous chant of sailors on some unseen,
outlying ship, came faint and far, and full of mystic
suggestion.
About a year ago, a well-to-do middle-aged broker
of San Francisco found himself at night-fall the sole
occupant of a “plunger,” encompassed in a dense fog,
and drifting toward the Golden Gate. This unexpected
termination of an afternoon's sail was partly
attributable to his want of nautical skill, and partly
to the effect of his usually sanguine nature. Having
given up the guidance of his boat to the wind and
tide, he had trusted too implicitly for that reaction
which his business experience assured him was certain
to occur in all affairs, aquatic as well as terrestrial.
“The tide will turn soon,” said the broker,
confidently, “or something will happen.” He had
before the bow of the plunger, obeying some mysterious
impulse, veered slowly around and a dark object
loomed up before him. A gentle eddy carried the
boat further in-shore, until at last it was completely
embayed under the lee of a rocky point now faintly
discernible through the fog. He looked around
him in the vain hope of recognizing some familiar
headland. The tops of the high hills which rose on
either side were hidden in the fog. As the boat
swung around, he succeeded in fastening a line to
the rocks, and sat down again with a feeling of renewed
confidence and security.
It was very cold. The insidious fog penetrated
his tightly-buttoned coat, and set his teeth to chattering
in spite of the aid he sometimes drew from a pocket-flask.
His clothes were wet and the stern-sheets
were covered with spray. The comforts of fire and
shelter continually rose before his fancy as he gazed
wistfully on the rocks. In sheer despair he finally
drew the boat toward the most accessible part of the
cliff and essayed to ascend. This was less difficult
than it appeared, and in a few moments he had gained
the hill above. A dark object at a little distance attracted
his attention, and on approaching it proved to
be a deserted cabin. The story goes on to say, that
having built a roaring fire of stakes pulled from the
adjoining corral, with the aid of a flask of excellent
brandy, he managed to pass the early part of the
evening with comparative comfort.
There was no door in the cabin, and the windows
the searching fog. But in spite of these discomforts
—being a man of cheerful, sanguine temperament—
he amused himself by poking the fire, and watching
the ruddy glow which the flames threw on the fog
from the open door. In this innocent occupation a
great weariness overcame him and he fell asleep.
He was awakened at midnight by a loud “halloo,”
which seemed to proceed directly from the sea.
Thinking it might be the cry of some boatman lost
in the fog, he walked to the edge of the cliff, but the
thick veil that covered sea and land rendered all
objects at the distance of a few feet indistinguishable.
He heard, however, the regular strokes of oars rising
and falling on the water. The halloo was repeated.
He was clearing his throat to reply, when to his surprise
an answer came apparently from the very cabin
he had quitted. Hastily retracing his steps, he was
the more amazed, on reaching the open door, to find a
stranger warming himself by the fire. Stepping back
far enough to conceal his own person, he took a good
look at the intruder.
He was a man of about forty, with a cadaverous
face. But the oddity of his dress attracted the broker's
attention more than his lugubrious physiognomy. His
legs were hid in enormously wide trowsers descending
to his knee, where they met long boots of sealskin.
A pea jacket with exaggerated cuffs, almost
as large as the breeches, covered his chest, and
around his waist a monstrous belt, with a buckle like
a dentist's sign, supported two trumpet-mouthed pistols
which depended half way down his back. As the
fire-light fell on his ingenuous countenance the broker
observed with some concern that this queue was
formed entirely of a kind of tobacco, known as pigtail
or twist. Its effect, the broker remarked, was
much heightened when in a moment of thoughtful abstraction
the apparition bit off a portion of it, and rolled
it as a quid into the cavernous recesses of his jaws.
Meanwhile, the nearer splash of oars indicated the
approach of the unseen boat. The broker had barely
time to conceal himself behind the cabin before a
number of uncouth-looking figures clambered up the
hill towards the ruined rendezvous. They were
dressed like the previous comer, who, as they passed
through the open door, exchanged greetings with
each in antique phraseology, bestowing at the same
time some familiar nickname. Flash-in-the-Pan,
Spitter-of-Frogs, Malmsey Butt, Latheyard-Will, and
Mark-the-Pinker, were the few sobriquets the broker
remembered. Whether these titles were given to express
some peculiarity of their owner he could not tell,
for a silence followed as they slowly ranged themselves
upon the floor of the cabin in a semi-circle
around their cadaverous host.
At length Malmsey Butt, a spherical-bodied man-of-war's-man
with a rubicund nose, got on his legs
somewhat unsteadily, and addressed himself to the
company. They had met that evening, said the
speaker, in accordance with a time-honored custom.
This was simply to relieve that one of their number
the locality where certain treasures had been buried.
At this point the broker pricked up his ears. “If so
be, camarados and brothers all,” he continued, “ye
are ready to receive the report of our excellent and
well-beloved brother, Master Slit-the-Weazand, touching
his search for this treasure, why, marry, to't and
begin.'
A murmur of assent went around the circle as the
speaker resumed his seat. Master Slit-the-Weazand
slowly opened his lantern jaws, then began. He had
spent much of his time in determining the exact location
of the treasure. He believed—nay, he could
state positively—that its position was now settled.
It was true he had done some trifling little business
outside. Modesty forbade his mentioning the particulars,
but he would simply state that of the three
tenants who had occupied the cabin during the past
ten years, none were now alive. [Applause, and
cries of “Go to! thou wast always a tall fellow!” and
the like.]
Mark-the-Pinker next arose. Before proceeding
to business, he had a duty to perform in the sacred
name of Friendship. It ill became him to pass an
eulogy upon the qualities of the speaker who had
preceded him, for he had known him from “boyhood's
hour.” Side by side they had wrought together
in the Spanish war. For a neat hand with a
toledo he challenged his equal, while how nobly and
beautifully he had won his present title of Slit-the-Weazand,
all could testify. The speaker, with some
too freely on passages of their early companionship;
he then detailed, with a fine touch of humor, his comrade's
peculiar manner of slitting the ears and lips of
a refractory Jew, who had been captured in one of
their previous voyages. He would not weary the
patience of his hearers, but would briefly propose
that the report of Slit-the-Weazand be accepted, and
that the thanks of the company be tendered him.
A breaker of strong spirits was then rolled into the
hut, and cans of grog were circulated freely from
hand to hand. The health of Slit-the-Weazand was
proposed in a neat speech by Mark-the-Pinker, and
responded to by the former gentleman in a manner
that drew tears to the eyes of all present. To the
broker, in his concealment, this momentary diversion
from the real business of the meeting, occasioned
much anxiety. As yet nothing had been said to indicate
the exact locality of the treasure to which they
had mysteriously alluded. Fear restrained him from
open inquiry, and curiosity kept him from making
good his escape during the orgies which followed.
But his situation was beginning to become critical.
Flash-in-the-Pan, who seemed to have been a man of
choleric humor, taking fire during some hotly-contested
argument, discharged both his pistols at the
breast of his opponent. The balls passed through on
each side immediately below his arm-pits, making a
clean hole, through which the horrified broker could
see the fire-light behind him. The wounded man,
without betraying any concern, excited the laughter
and inserting his thumbs into the orifices of the
wounds, as if they had been arm-holes. This having
in a measure restored good humor, the party
joined hands and formed a circle preparatory to
dancing. The dance was commenced by some monotonous
stanzas hummed in a very high key by one
of the party, the rest joining in the following chorus,
which seemed to present a familiar sound to the broker's
ear.
Lord Essex hath ye measles,
Our Admiral hath licked ye French—
Poppe! saith ye weasel!”
At the regular recurrence of the last line, the party
discharged their loaded pistols in all directions, rendering
the position of the unhappy broker one of extreme
peril and perplexity.
When the tumult had partially subsided, Flash-in-the-Pan
called the meeting to order, and most of
the revelers returned to their places, Malmsey Butt,
however, insisting upon another chorus, and singing
at the top of his voice:
My father too make me ane clerke erst did essaye,
But a fico for ye offis—I spurn ye losels offeire;
For I fain would be ane butcher by'r ladykin alwaye.”
Flash-in-the-Pan drew a pistol from his belt, and
bidding some one gag Malmsey Butt with the stock
of it, proceeded to read from a portentous roll of
parchment that he held in his hand. It was a semi-legal
a by-gone period. After a long preamble, asserting
their loyalty as lieges of Her most bountiful Majesty
and Sovereign Lady the Queen, the document declared
that they then and there took possession of the
promontory, and all the treasure trove therein contained,
formerly buried by Her Majesty's most faithful
and devoted Admiral, Sir Francis Drake, with
the right to search, discover and appropriate the
same; and for the purpose thereof they did then and
there form a guild or corporation to so discover,
search for and disclose said treasures, and by virtue
thereof they solemnly subscribed their names. But
at this moment the reading of the parchment was
arrested by an exclamation from the assembly, and
the broker was seen frantically struggling at the door
in the strong arms of Mark-the-Pinker.
“Let me go!” he cried as he made a desperate attempt
to reach the side of Master Flash-in-the-Pan.
“Let me go! I tell you, gentlemen, that document is
not worth the parchment it is written on. The laws of
the State—the customs of the country—the mining
ordinances—are all against it. Don't, by all that's
sacred, throw away such a capital investment through
ignorance and informality. Let me go! I assure
you, gentlemen, professionally, that you have a big
thing—a remarkably big thing, and even if I ain't in
it, I'm not going to see it fall through. Don't, for
God's sake, gentlemen, I implore you, put your
names to such a ridiculous paper. There isn't a notary—”
He ceased. The figures around him, which were
beginning to grow fainter and more indistinct, as he
went on, swam before his eyes, flickered, re-appeared
again, and finally went out. He rubbed his eyes and
gazed around him. The cabin was deserted. On
the hearth the red embers of his fire were fading
away in the bright beams of the morning sun, that
looked aslant through the open window. He ran
out to the cliff. The sturdy sea-breeze fanned his
feverish cheeks, and tossed the white caps of waves
that beat in pleasant music on the beach below. A
stately merchantman with snowy canvas was entering
the Gate. The voices of sailors came cheerfully
from a bark at anchor below the point. The muskets
of the sentries gleamed brightly on Alcatraz,
and the rolling of drums swelled on the breeze.
Farther on, the hills of San Francisco, cottage-crowned
and bordered with wharves and warehouses,
met his longing eye.
Such is the Legend of Devil's Point. Any objections
to its reliability may be met with the statement
that the broker who tells the story has since
incorporated a company under the title of “Flash-in-the
Pan Gold and Silver Treasure Mining Company,”
and that its shares are already held at a
stiff figure. A copy of the original document is said
to be on record in the office of the company, and on
any clear day, the locality of the claim may be distinctly
seen from the hills of San Francisco.
THE DEVIL AND THE BROKER.
A MEDIÆVAL LEGEND.
The church clocks in San Francisco were striking
ten. The Devil, who had been flying over the city
that evening, just then alighted on the roof of a
church near the corner of Bush and Montgomery
streets. It will be perceived that the popular belief
that the Devil avoids holy edifices, and vanishes at
the sound of a Credo or Paternoster, is long since exploded.
Indeed, modern skepticism asserts that he
is not averse to these orthodox discourses, which particularly
bear reference to himself, and in a measure
recognize his power and importance.
I am inclined to think, however, that his choice of
a resting-place was a good deal influenced by its
contiguity to a populous thoroughfare. When he
was comfortably seated he began pulling out the
joints of a small rod which he held in his hand, and
which presently proved to be an extraordinary fishing-pole,
with a telescopic adjustment that permitted
its protraction to a marvelous extent. Affixing a
from a small box which he carried with him, and,
making a skillful cast, threw his line into the very
centre of that living stream which ebbed and flowed
through Montgomery Street.
Either the people were very virtuous that evening
or the bait was not a taking one. In vain the Devil
whipped the stream at an eddy in front of the Occidental,
or trolled his line into the shadows of the
Cosmopolitan; five minutes passed without even a
nibble. “Dear me!” quoth the Devil, “that's very
singular; one of my most popular flies, too! Why,
they'd have risen by shoals in Broadway or Beacon
street, for that. Well, here goes another,” and,
fitting a new fly from his well filled box, he gracefully
recast his line.
For a few moments there was every prospect of
sport. The line was continually bobbing and the
nibbles were distinct and gratifying. Once or twice
the bait was apparently gorged and carried off in the
upper stories of the hotels to be digested at leisure.
At such times the professional manner in which the
Devil played out his line would have thrilled the
heart of Izaak Walton. But his efforts were unsuccessful;
the bait was invariably carried off without
hooking the victim, and the Devil finally lost his
temper. “I've heard of these San Franciscans before,”
he muttered; “wait till I get hold of one—
that's all!” he added malevolently, as he re-baited his
hook. A sharp tug and a wriggle folled his next
trial, and finally, with considerable effort, he landed
a portly 200-lb. broker upon the church roof.
As the victim lay there gasping, it was evident
that the Devil was in no hurry to remove the hook
from his gills; nor did he exhibit in this delicate
operation that courtesy of manner and graceful
manipulation which usually distinguished him.
“Come,” he said gruffly, as he grasped the broker
by the waistband, “quit that whining and grunting.
Don't flatter yourself that you're a prize, either. I
was certain to have had you. It was only a question
of time.”
“It is not that, my lord, which troubles me,”
whined the unfortunate wretch, as he painfully
wriggled his head, “but that I should have been
fooled by such a paltry bait. What will they say
of me down there? To have let `bigger things' go
by, and to be taken in by this cheap trick,” he
added, as he groaned and glanced at the fly which
the Devil was carefully re-arranging, “is what—pardon
me, my lord—is what gets me!”
“Yes,” said the Devil, philosophically, “I never
caught anybody yet who didn't say that; but tell
me, ain't you getting somewhat fastidious down
there? Here is one of my most popular flies, the
greenback,” he continued, exhibiting an emerald
looking insect, which he drew from his box.
“This, so generally considered excellent in election
season, has not even been nibbled at. Perhaps your
sagacity, which, in spite of this unfortunate contretemps,
no one can doubt,” added the Devil, with a
graceful return to his usual courtesy, “may explain
the reason or suggest a substitute.”
The broker glanced at the contents of the box
with a supercilious smile. “Too old-fashioned, my
lord—long ago played out.” “Yet,” he added, with
a gleam of interest, “for a consideration I might
offer something—ahem!—that would make a taking
substitute for these trifles. Give me,” he continued,
in a brisk, business-like way, “a slight percentage
and a bonus down, and I'm your man.”
“Name your terms,” said the Devil earnestly.
“My liberty and a percentage on all you take, and
the thing's done.”
The Devil caressed his tail thoughtfully, for a few
moments. He was certain of the broker any way—
and the risk was slight. “Done!” he said.
“Stay a moment,” said the artful broker. “There
are certain contingencies. Give me your fishing rod
and let me apply the bait myself. It requires a
skillful hand, my lord; even your well-known experience
might fail. Leave me alone for half an
hour, and if you have reason to complain of my
success I will forfeit my deposit—I mean my
liberty.”
The Devil acceded to his request, bowed and withdrew.
Alighting gracefully in Montgomery Street, he
dropped into Meade & Co.'s clothing store, where, having
completely equipped himself à la mode, he sallied
forth intent on his personal enjoyment. Determining
to sink his professional character, he mingled with the
current of human life, and enjoyed, with that immense
capacity for excitement peculiar to his nature, the
whirl, bustle and feverishness of the people, as a
of business. What he did that evening does not belong
to our story. We return to the broker, whom
we left on the roof.
When he made sure that the Devil had retired, he
carefully drew from his pocket-book a slip of paper
and affixed it on the hook. The line had scarcely
reached the current before he felt a bite. The hook
was swallowed. To bring up his victim rapidly,
disengage him from the hook and re-set his line was
the work of a moment. Another bite and the same
result. Another, and another. In a very few minutes
the roof was covered with his panting spoil. The
broker could himself distinguish that many of them
were personal friends—nay, some of them were familiar
frequenters of the building on which they were
now miserably stranded. That the broker felt a certain
satisfaction in being instrumental in thus misleading
his fellow-brokers no one acquainted with
human nature will for a moment doubt. But a stronger
pull on his line caused him to put forth all his
strength and skill. The magic pole bent like a coach-whip.
The broker held firm, assisted by the battlements
of the church. Again and again it was almost
wrested from his hand, and again again he slowly
reeled in a portion of the tightening line. At last,
with one mighty effort, he lifted to the level of the
roof a struggling object. A howl like Pandemonium
rang through the air as the broker successfully landed
at his feet—the Devil himself!
The two glared fiercely at each other. The broker,
haste to remove the hook from his antagonist's jaw.
When it was finally accomplished, he asked quietly
if the Devil was satisfied. That gentleman seemed
absorbed in the contemplation of the bait which he
had just taken from his mouth. “I am,” he said,
finally, “and forgive you—but what do you call this?”
“Bend low,” replied the Broker, as he buttomed
up his coat ready to depart. The Devil inclined his
ear. “I call it Wild Cat?”
THE OGRESS OF SILVER LAND;
OR,
THE DIVERTING HISTORY OF PRINCE BADFELLAH
AND PRINCE BULLEBOYE.
In the second year of the reign of the renowned
Caliph Lo there dwelt in Silver Land, adjoining his
territory, a certain terrible ogress. She lived in the
bowels of a dismal mountain, where she was in the
habit of confining such unfortunate travelers as ventured
within her domain. The country for miles
around was sterile and barren. In some places it was
covered with a white powder, which was called in the
language of the country Al Ka Li, and was supposed
to be the pulverized bones of those who had perished
miserably in her service.
In spite of this, every year, great numbers of
young men devoted themselves to the service of the
ogress, hoping to become her godsons, and to enjoy
the good fortune which belonged to that privileged
class. For these godsons had no work to perform,
neither at the mountain nor elsewhere, but roamed
about the world with credentials of their relationship
in their pockets, which they called STOKH, which was
ogress, and which enabled them at the end of each
moon to draw large quantities of gold and silver
from her treasury. And the wisest and most favored
of those godsons were the Princes Badfellah
and Bulleboye. They knew all the secrets of the
ogress, and how to wheedle and coax her. They
were also the favorites of Soopah Intendent, who
was her Lord High Chamberlain and Prime Minister,
and who dwelt in Silver Land.
One day, Soopah Intendent said to his servants,
“What is that which travels the most surely, the
most secretly, and the most swiftly?”
And they all answered as one man, “Lightning,
my Lord, travels the most surely, the most swiftly
and the most secretly!”
Then said Soopah Intendent, “Let lightning carry
this message secretly, swiftly and surely to my beloved
friends the Princes Badfellah and Bulleboye,
and tell them that their godmother is dying,
and bid them seek some other godmother or sell
their STOKH ere it becomes badjee—worthless.”
“Bekhesm! On our heads be it!” answered the
servants; and they ran to Lightning with the message,
who flew with it to the City by the Sea, and delivered
it, even at that moment, into the hands of the
Princes Badfellah and Bulleboye.
Now the Prince Badfellah was a wicked young
man, and when he had received this message he tore
his beard and rent his garment and reviled his godmother,
and his friend Soopah Intendent. But
stuffs, and went forth into the Bazaars and among the
merchants, capering and dancing as he walked, and
crying in a loud voice, “Oh, happy day—oh, day
worthy to be marked with a white stone!”
This he said cunningly, thinking the merchants
and men of the bazaars would gather about him,
which they presently did, and began to question him:
“What news, O most worthy and serene Highness?
Tell us, that we make merry, too!”
Then replied the cunning prince, “Good news, O
my brothers, for I have heard this day that my godmother
in Silver Land is well.” The merchants
who were not aware of the substance of the real message,
envied him greatly, and said one to another:
“Surely our brother the Prince Badfellah is favored
by Allah above all men;” and they were about to
retire, when the prince checked them, saying: “Tarry
for a moment. Here are my credentials or STOKH.
The same I will sell you for fifty thousand sequins,
for I have to give a feast to-day, and need much
gold. Who will give fifty thousand?” And he
again fell to capering and dancing. But this time
the merchants drew a little apart, and some of the
oldest and wisest said: “What dirt is this which the
prince would have us swallow. If his godmother
were well, why should he sell his STOKH. Bismillah!
The olives are old and the jar is broken!” When
Prince Badfellah perceived them whispering, his
countenance fell, and his knees smote against each
other through fear; but dissembling again, he said:
abide with me, for my days are many and my wants
are few. Say forty thousand sequins for my STOKH
and let me depart in Allah's name. Who will give
forty thousand sequins to become the godson of such
a healthy mother?” And he again fell to capering
and dancing, but not as gaily as before, for his heart
was troubled. The merchants, however, only moved
farther away. “Thirty thousand sequins,” cried
Prince Badfellah; but even as he spoke they fled before
his face crying: “His godmother is dead. Lo, the
jackals are defiling her grave. Mashalla! he has no
godmother.” And they sought out Panik, the swift-footed
messenger, and bade him shout through the
bazaars that the godmother of Prince Badfellah
was dead. When he heard this, the prince fell upon
his face, and rent his garments, and covered himself
with the dust of the market place. As he was sitting
thus, a porter passed him with jars of wine on
his shoulders, and the prince begged him to give him
a jar, for he was exceeding thirsty and faint. But
the porter said, “What will my lord give me first?”
And the prince, in very bitterness of spirit, said,
“Take this,” and handed him his stokh and so exchanged
it for a jar of wine.
Now the Prince Bulleboye was of a very different
disposition. When he received the message of
Soopah Intendent he bowed his head, and said,
“It is the will of God.” Then he rose, and without
speaking a word entered the gates of his palace. But
his wife, the peerless Maree Jahann, perceiving the
cast down and silent? Why are those rare and
priceless pearls, his words, shut up so tightly between
those gorgeous oyster shells, his lips?” But
to this he made no reply. Thinking further to divert
him, she brought her lute into the chamber and
stood before him, and sang the song and danced the
dance of Ben Kotton, which is called Ibrahim's
Daughter, but she could not lift the veil of sadness
from his brow.
When she had ceased, the Prince Bulleboye
arose and said, “Allah is great, and what am I, his
servant, but the dust of the earth! Lo, this day has
my godmother sickened unto death, and my stokh
become as a withered palm leaf. Call hither my
servants and camel drivers, and the merchants that
have furnished me with stuffs, and the beggars who
have feasted at my table, and bid them take all that
is here, for it is mine no longer!' With these words
he buried his face in his mantle and wept aloud.
But Maree Jahann, his wife, plucked him by the
sleeve: “Prithee, my lord,” said she, “bethink thee
of the Brokah or scrivener, who besought thee but
yesterday to share thy stokh with him and gave thee
his bond for fifty thousand sequins?” But the noble
Prince Bulleboye, raising his head, said: “Shall
I sell to him for fifty thousand sequins that
which I know is not worth a Soo Markee. For is
not all the Brokah's wealth—even his wife and
children, pledged on that bond? Shall I ruin him
to save myself? Allah forbid! Rather let me eat the
affluence: rather let me wallow in the mire of
virtuous oblivion, than repose on the divan of luxurious
wickedness.”
When the prince had given utterance to this beautiful
and edifying sentiment a strain of gentle music
was heard, and the rear wall of the apartment, which
had been ingeniously constructed like a flat, opened
and discovered the Ogress of Silver Land in the
glare of blue fire, seated on a triumphal car attached
to two ropes which were connected with the flies, in
the very act of blessing the unconscious prince.
When the walls closed again without attracting his
attention, Prince Bulleboye arose, dressed himself
in his coarsest and cheapest stuffs, and sprinkled ashes
on his head, and in this guise, having embraced
his wife, went forth into the bazaars. In this it will
be perceived how differently the good Prince Bulleboye
acted from the wicked Prince Badfellah, who
put on his gayest garments to simulate and deceive.
Now when Prince Bulleboye entered the chief
bazaar, where the merchants of the city were gathered
in council, he stood up in his accustomed place,
and all that were there held their breath, for the noble
Prince Bulleboye was much respected. “Let
the Brokah, whose bond I hold for fifty thousand
sequins, stand forth!” said the prince. And the
Brokah stood forth from among the merchants.
Then said the prince: “Here is thy bond for fifty
thousand sequins, for which I was to deliver unto
thee one-half of my stokh. Know, then, O my
that this my STOKH which I pledged to thee is worthless.
For my godmother, the Ogress of Silver
Land, is dying. Thus do I release thee from thy
bond, and from the poverty which might overtake
thee as it has even me, thy brother, the Prince
Bulleboye.” And with that the noble Prince
Bulleboye tore the bond of the Brokah into
pieces and scattered it to the four winds.
Now when the prince tore up the bond there was
a great commotion, and some said: “Surely the Prince
Bulleboye is drunken with wine;” and others:
“He is possessed of an evil spirit;” and his friends
expostulated with him, saying: “What thou hast
done is not the custom of the bazaars—behold, it is
not Biz!” But to all the prince answered gravely:
“It is right—on my own head be it!”
But the oldest and wisest of the merchants, they
who had talked with Prince Badfellah the same
morning, whispered together, and gathered around
the Brokah whose bond the Prince Bulleboye had
torn up. “Hark ye,” said they, “our brother the
Prince Bulleboye is cunning as a jackal. What
bosh is this about ruining himself to save thee?
Such a thing was never heard before in the bazaars.
It is a trick, O thou mooncalf of a Brokah! Dost
thou not see that he has heard good news from his
godmother, the same that was even now told us by
the Prince Badfellah, his confederate, and that he
would destroy thy bond for fifty thousand sequins
Be not deceived, O too credulous Brokah! for this
what our brother the prince doeth is not in the name
of Allah, but of Biz, the only god known in the
bazaars of the city.”
When the foolish Brokah heard these things he
cried: “Justice, O Aga of the Brokahs—justice
and the fulfillment of my bond! Let the prince deliver
unto me the STOKH. Here are my fifty thousand
sequins.” But the prince said: “Have I not
told that my godmother is dying, and that my STOKH
is valueless?” At this the Brokah only clamored
the more for justice and the fulfillment of his bond.
Then the Aga of the Brokahs said. “Since the bond
is destroyed, behold thou hast no claim. Go thy
ways!” But the Brokah again cried: “Justice, my
lord Aga! Behold, I offer the prince seventy thousand
sequins for his STOKH!” But the prince said:
“It is not worth one sequin!” Then the Aga said:
“Bismillah! I cannot understand this. Whether
thy godmother be dead, or dying, or immortal, does
not seem to signify. Therefore, O prince, by the
laws of Biz and of Allah, thou art released. Give
the Brokah thy STOKH for seventy thousand sequins
and bid him depart in peace. On his own head be
it!” When the prince heard this command, he
handed his STOKH to the Brokah, who counted out
to him seventy thousand sequins. But the heart of
the virtuous prince did not rejoice, nor did the
Brokah, when he found his STOKH was valueless:
sagacity and wisdom of the famous Prince Bulleboye.
For none would believe that it was the law
of Allah that the prince followed, and not the rules
of Biz.
THE RUINS OF SAN FRANCISCO.
Towards the close of the 19th century the city of
San Francisco was totally engulfed by an earthquake.
Although the whole coast line must have been much
shaken, the accident seems to have been purely local
and even the city of Oakland escaped. Schwappelfurt,
the celebrated German geologist, has endeavored
to explain this singular fact by suggesting that there
are some things the earth cannot swallow—a statement
that should be received with some caution, as
exceeding the latitude of ordinary geological speculation.
Historians disagree in the exact date of the calamity.
Tulu Krish, the well-known New Zealander, whose
admirable speculations on the ruins of St. Paul as
seen from London Bridge have won for him the attentive
consideration of the scientific world, fixes the
occurrence in A. D. 1880. This, supposing the city
to have been actually founded in 1850, as asserted,
would give but thirty years for it to have assumed
the size and proportions it had evidently attained
at the time of its destruction. It is not our purpose,
however, to question the conclusions of the justly
lies with the excavations that are now being prosecuted
by order of the Hawaiian Government upon
the site of the lost city.
Every one is familiar with the story of its discovery.
For many years the bay of San Francisco had been
famed for the luscious quality of its oysters. It is
stated that a dredger one day raked up a large bell,
which prove to belong to the City Hall, and led to
the discovery of the cupola of that building. The
attention of the Government was at once directed to
the spot. The bay of San Francisco was speedily
drained by a system of patent syphons, and the city,
deeply imbedded in mud, brought to light after a
burial of many centuries. The City Hall, Post Office,
Mint and Custom House were readily recognized by
the large full-fed barnacles which adhered to their
walls. Shortly afterwards the first skeleton was discovered,
that of a broker, whose position in the upper
strata of mud nearer the surface, was supposed to
be owing to the exceeding buoyancy or inflation of
scrip which he had secured about his person while
endeavoring to escape. Many skeletons, supposed to
be those of females, encompassed in that peculiar steel
coop or cage, which seems to have been worn by the
women of that period, were also found in the upper
stratum. Alexis von Puffer, in his admirable work
on San Francisco, accounts for the position of these
unfortunate creatures, by asserting that the steel cage
was originally the frame of a parachute like garment
which distended the skirt, and in the submersion of
says Von Puffer, “could have been wanting to add
intensity to the horrible catastrophe which took place
as the waters first entered the city, it would have
been furnished in the forcible separation of the sexes
at this trying moment. Buoyed up by their peculiar
garments, the female population instantly ascended to
to the surface. As the drowning husband turned his
eyes above, what must have been his agony as he saw
his wife shooting upward, and knew that he was debarred
the privilege of perishing with her? To the
lasting honor of the male inhabitants, be it said that
but few seem to have availed themselves of their wives'
superior levity. Only one skeleton was found still
grasping the ankles of another in their upward journey
to the surface.”
For many years California had been subject to slight
earthquakes, more or less generally felt, but not of
sufficient importance to awaken anxiety or fear. Perhaps
the absorbing nature of the San Franciscans'
pursuits of gold getting, which metal seems to have
been valuable in those days, and actually used as a
medium of currency, rendered the inhabitants reckless
of all other matters. Everything tends to show
that the calamity was totally unlooked for. We quote
the graphic language of Schwappelfurt:
“The morning of the tremendous catastrophe probably
dawned upon the usual restless crowd of gold
getters intent upon their several avocations. The
streets were filled with the expanded figures of gaily-dressed
women, acknowledging with coy glances the
raised their remarkable cylindrical head-coverings,
a model of which is still preserved in the Honolulu
Museum. The brokers had gathered at their respective
temples. The shopmen were exhibiting their
goods. The idlers, or `Bummers'—a term applied
to designate an aristocratic, privileged class who enjoyed
immunities from labor and from whom a majority
of the rulers are chosen—were listlessly regarding
the promenaders from the street corners or the
doors of their bibulous temples. A slight premonitory
thrill runs through the city. The busy life of
this restless microcosm is arrested. The shopkeeper
pauses as he elevates the goods to bring them into a
favorable light, and the glib professional recommendation
sticks on his tongue. In the drinking saloon
the glass is checked half way to the lips; on the
streets the promenaders pause. Another thrill and
the city begins to go down a few of the more persistent
topers tossing off their liquor at the same moment.
Beyond a terrible sensation of nausea, the
crowds who now throng the streets do not realize the
extent of the catastrophe. The waters of the bay
recede at first from the centre of depression, assuming
a concave shape, the outer edge of the circle towering
many thousand feet above the city. Another
convulsion, and the water instantly resumes its level.
The city is smoothly engulfed nine thousand feet below,
and the regular swell of the Pacific calmly rolls
over it. Terrible,” says Schwappelfurt, in conclusion,
“as the calamity must have been, in direct relation
cannot but admire its artistic management; the division
of the catastrophe into three periods, the completeness
of the cataclysms and the rare combination
of sincerity of intention with felicity of execution.”
A NIGHT AT WINGDAM.
I had been stage-ridden and bewildered all day,
and when we swept down with the darkness into the
Arcadian hamlet of “Wingdam,” I resolved to go no
further, and rolled out in a gloomy and dyspeptic
state. The effects of a mysterious pie, and some
sweetened carbonic acid known to the proprietor of
the “Half Way House” as “lemming sody,” still
oppressed me. Even the facetiæ of the gallant expressman
who knew everybody's christian name
along the route, who rained letters, newspapers and
bundles from the top of the stage, whose legs frequently
appeared in frightful proximity to the
wheels, who got on and off while we were going at
full speed, whose gallantry, energy and superior
knowledge of travel crushed all us other passengers
to envious silence, and who just then was talking
with several persons and manifestly doing something
else at the same time—even this had failed to interest
me. So I stood gloomily, clutching my shawl
and carpet bag, and watched the stage roll away,
taking a parting look at the gallant expressman as
he hung on the top rail with one leg, and lit his
turned toward the Wingdam Temperance Hotel.
It may have been the weather, or it may have
been the pie, but I was not impressed favorably with
the house. Perhaps it was the name extending the
whole length of the building, with a letter under
each window, making the people who looked out
dreadfully conspicuous. Perhaps it was that “Temperance”
always suggested to my mind, rusks and
weak tea. It was uninviting. It might have been
called the “Total Abstinence” Hotel, from the lack
of anything to intoxicate or enthrall the senses. It
was designed with an eye to artistic dreariness. It
was so much too large for the settlement, that it appeared
to be a very slight improvement on out-doors.
It was unpleasantly new. There was the forest flavor
of dampness about it, and a slight spicing of
pine. Nature outraged, but not entirely subdued,
sometimes broke out afresh in little round, sticky,
resinous tears on the doors and windows. It seemed
to me that boarding there must seem like a perpetual
picnic. As I entered the door, a number of the regular
boarders rushed out of a long room, and set
about trying to get the taste of something out of
their mouths, by the application of tobacco in various
forms. A few immediately ranged themselves around
the fire-place, with their legs over each other's chairs,
and in that position silently resigned themselves to
indigestion. Remembering the pie, I waived the invitation
of the landlord to supper, but suffered myself
to be conducted into the sitting-room. “Mine
specimen of the animal man. He reminded me of
somebody or something connected with the drama. I
was sitting beside the fire, mutely wondering what it
could be, and trying to follow the particular chord of
memory thus touched, into the intricate past, when
a little delicate-looking woman appeared at the door,
and leaning heavily against the casing, said in an exhausted
tone. “Husband!” As the landlord turned
toward her, that particular remembrance flashed before
me, in a single line of blank verse. It was this:
“Two souls with but one single thought, two hearts
that beat as one.”
It was Ingomar and Parthenia his wife. I imagined
a different denouement from the play. Ingomar
had taken Parthenia back to the mountains,
and kept a hotel for the benefit of the Alemanni,
who resorted there in large numbers. Poor Parthenia
was pretty well fagged out, and did all the work
without “help.” She had two “young barbarians,”
a boy and a girl. She was faded—but still good
looking.
I sat and talked with Ingomar, who seemed perfectly
at home and told me several stories of the Alemanni,
all bearing a strong flavor of the wilderness, and being
perfectly in keeping with the house. How he, Ingomar,
had killed a certain dreadful “bar,” whose
skin was just up “yar,” over his bed. How he, Ingomar,
had killed several “bucks,” whose skins had
been prettily fringed and embroidered by Parthenia,
and even now clothed him. How he, Ingomar, had
himself. All this with that ingenious candor which
is perfectly justifiable in a barbarian, but which a
Greek might feel inclined to look upon as “blowing.”
Thinking of the wearied Parthenia, I began
to consider for the first time that perhaps she had
better married the old Greek. Then she woiuld at
least have always looked neat. Then she would not
have worn a woolen dress flavored with all the dinners
of the past year. Then she would not have been
obliged to wait on the table with her hair half down.
Then the two children would not have hung about
her skirts with dirty fingers, palpably dragging her
down day by day. I suppose it was the pie which
put such heartless and improper ideas in my head,
and so I rose up and told Ingomar I believed I'd go
to bed. Preceded by that redoutable barbarian and
a flaring tallow candle, I followed him up stairs to
my room. It was the only single room he had, he
told me; he had built it for the convenience of
married parties who might stop here, but that event
not happening yet, he had left it half furnished. It
had cloth on one side, and large cracks on the other.
The wind, which always swept over Wingdam at
night time, puffed through the apartment from
different apertures. The window was too small for
the hole in the side of the house where it hung, and
rattled noisily. Everything looked cheerless and dispiriting.
Before Ingomar left me, he brought that
“bar-skin,” and throwing it over the solemn bier
which stood in one corner, told me he reckoned that
I undressed myself, the light blowing out in the
middle of that ceremony, crawled under the “bar-skin,”
and tried to compose myself to sleep.
But I was staringly wide awake. I heard the
wind sweep down the mountain side, and toss the
branches of the melancholy pine, and then enter the
house, and try all the doors along the passage. Sometimes
strong currents of air blew my hair all over
the pillow, as with strange whispering breaths. The
green timber along the walls seemed to be sprouting,
and sent a dampness even through the bar-skin.” I
felt like Robinson Crusoe in his tree, with the ladder
pulled up—or like the rocked baby of the nursery
song. After lying awake half an hour, I regretted
having stopped at “Wingdam;” at the end of the
third quarter, I wished I had not gone to bed, and
when a restless hour passed, I got up and dressed
myself. There had been a fire down in the big room.
Perhaps it was still burning. I opened the door and
groped my way along a passage, vocal with the
snores of the Alemanni and the whistling of the night
wind; I partly fell down stairs, and at last entering
the big room, saw the fire still burning. I drew a
chair toward it, poked it with my foot, and was astonished
to see, by the up-springing flash, that Parthenia
was sitting there also, holding a faded looking baby.
I asked her why she was sitting up?
She did not go to bed on Wednesday night, before
the mail arrived, and then she awoke her husband,
and there were passengers to 'tend to.”
“Did she not get tired, sometimes?”
“A little, but Abner,” (the Barbarian's Christian
name,) “had promised to get her more help next
spring, if business was good.”
“How many boarders had she?”
“She believed about forty came to regular meals,
and there was transient custom, which was as much
as she and her husband could 'tend to. But he did
a great deal of work.” “What work?” “Oh! bringing
in the wood, and looking after the traders' things.”
“How long had she been married?” “About nine
years. She had lost a little girl and boy. Three
children living. He was from Illinois. She from
Boston. Had an education, (Boston Female High
School—Geometry, Algebra, a little Latin and Greek.)
Mother and father died. Came to Illinois alone, to
teach school. Saw him—yes—a love match, (`Two
souls,' etc., etc.) Married and emigrated to Kansas.
Thence across the Plains to California. Always on
the outskirts of civilization. He liked it.”
“She might sometimes have wished to go home.
Would like to, on account of her children. Would
like to give them an education. Had taught them a
little herself, but couldn't do much on account of other
work. Hoped that the boy would be like his
father—strong and hearty. Was fearful the girl
would be more like her. Had often thought she was
not fit for a pioneer's wife.”
“Why?”
“Oh she was not strong enough, and had seen some
of his friends' wives in Kansas who could do more
—(“Two souls,” etc.)
Sitting there with her head leaning pensively on
one hand, holding the poor, wearied and limp-looking
baby wearily on the other arm—dirty, drabbled and
forlorn, with the firelight playing upon her features
no longer fresh or young, but still refined and delicate,
and even in her grotesque slovenliness, still bearing a
faint reminiscence of birth and breeding, it was not
to be wondered that I did not fall into excessive raptures
over the barbarian's kindness. Emboldened by
my sympathy, she told me how she had given up,
little by little, what she imagined to be the weakness
of her early education, until she found that she acquired
but little strength in her new experience.
How, translated to a backwoods society, she was hated
by the women and called proud and “fine,” and how
her dear husband lost popularity on that account with
his fellows. How, led partly by his roving instincts,
and partly from other circumstances, he started with
her to California. An account of that tedious journey.
How it was a dreary, dreary waste in her memory, only
a blank plain marked by a little cairn of stones—a
child's grave. How she had noticed that little Willie
failed. How she had called Abner's attention to it,
but, man like, he knew nothing about children, and
pooh-poohed it, and was worried by the stock. How it
happened that after they had passed Sweetwater, she
was walking beside the wagon one night, and looking
at the western sky, and she heard a little voice say
“mother.” How she looked into the wagon and saw
wish to wake him. How that in a few moments more
she heard the same voice saying “mother.” How she
came back to the wagon and leaned down over him,
and felt his breath upon her face, and again covered
him up tenderly, and once more resumed her weary
journey beside him, praying to God for his recovery.
How with her face turned to the sky she heard the same
voice saying “mother,” and directly a great bright
star shot away from its brethren and expired. And
how she knew what had happened, and ran to the
wagon again only to pillow a little pinched and cold
white face upon her weary bosom. The thin, red
hands went up to her eyes here, and for a few moments
she sat still. The wind tore round the house
and made a frantic rush at the front door, and from
his coach of skins in the inner room—Ingomar, the
barbarian, snored peacefully.
Of course she always found a protector from insult
and outrage in the great courage and strength of her
husband?
Oh yes; when Ingomar was with her she feared
nothing. But she was nervous and had been frightened
once!
How?
They had just arrived in California. They kept
house then, and had to sell liquor to traders. Ingomar
was hospitable, and drank with everybody, for
the sake of popularity and business, and Ingomar
got to like liquor, and was easily affected by it. And
how one night there was a boisterous crowd in the
only succeeded in awakening the coarse gallantry of
the half crazed revelers. And how, when she had at
last got him in the room with her frightened children,
he sank down on the bed in a stupor, which made
her think the liquor was drugged. And how she sat
beside him all night, and near morning heard a step
in the passage, and looking toward the door, saw the
latch slowly moving up and down, as if somebody
were trying it. And how she shook her husband,
and tried to waken him, but without effect. And
how at last the door yielded slowly at the top, (it was
bolted below,) as if by a gradual pressure without;
and how a hand protruded through the opening.
And how as quick as lightning she nailed that hand
to the wall with her scissors, (her only weapon,) but
the point broke, and somebody got away with a fearful
oath. How she never told her husband of it, for
fear he would kill that somebody; but how on one
day a stranger called here, and as she was handing
him his coffee, she saw a queer triangular scar on the
back of his hand.
She was still talking, and the wind was still blowing,
and Ingomar was still snoring from his couch of
skins, when there was a shout high up the straggling
street, and a clattering of hoofs, and rattling of wheels
The mail had arrived. Parthenia ran with the faded
baby to awaken Ingomar, and almost simultaneously
the gallant expressman stood again before me addressing
me by my Christian name, and inviting me to
drink out of a mysterious black bottle. The horses
expressman concluded, and bidding Parthenia
good-bye, I got on the stage, and immediately fell
asleep, and dreamt of calling on Parthenia and Ingomar,
and being treated with pie to an unlimited extent
until I woke up the next morning in Sacramento.
I have some doubts as to whether all this
was not a dyspeptic dream, but I never witness the
drama, and hear that noble sentiment concerning
“Two souls,” etc., without thinking of Wingdam and
poor Parthenia.
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