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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.”
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