Mount Diablo

“ The tall crags cast their irregular shadows athwart the cove and a sudden puff of wind, which had freshened as the day wore on, ruffled the quiet waters and caused them to slap angrily at the base of the ledge. [Pg 125] Dickie Lang cast a weather-eye to seaward and shook her head.
"Time we were getting in the clear, boys," she said. "The tide's beginning to set in strong and the breeze is freshening. We've got about all we dare fool with. I want to get clear of the Diablo coast before the fog drifts any closer." ”

“ All of the cluster of piny hills which surrounds Diablo like brilliants around a stone of the first water are still in darkness, and the two large valleys at either side seem an indistinct blur, when the heavy, phantom-like shadow is thrown on the scene, slantingly, clear, and sudden. ”

“ God has sent a warning message By the Fairies, and they whispered To me as I ground the acorns In the mortar 'neath the buckeyes. Rally all your braves around you, Seize your strong bows, fill your quivers With the long flint-pointed arrows; Guard the ridges to the eastward Ere the foe shall fall upon us.' To the eastward where Diablo Rears its peak above the fog banks Drifting landward from the ocean, Lived a warlike tribe of people. Fierce they were, and grim and cruel, Worshiping the Fire Demon Who is crouching in the mountain. ”

“ Yaqui led Diablo into it, and then began the most laborious and vexatious and painful of all slow travel.
Once up on top of that lava bed, Gale saw stretching away, breaking into millions of crests and ruts, a vast, red-black field sweeping onward and upward, with ragged, low ridges and mounds and spurs leading higher and higher to a great, split escarpment wall, above which dim peaks shone hazily blue in the distance.
He looked no more in that direction. To keep his foothold, to save his horse, cost him all energy and attention. ”

“ Dad used to fish out here, but something was always sure to happen about the time he got well started. Just like yesterday. Diablo's a place," she said slowly, "where a man just can't make a mistake. If he does, he never lives to tell what happened." She pointed to the frowning cliffs which guarded the shore and extended far out into the water in a series of white-capped reefs. ”

“ Below the steep hill the little town of Benicia celebrated the eve of Christmas with lights and noise. Beyond, the water sparkled like running silver under the wide beams of the moon poised just above the peak of Monte Diablo, the old volcano that towered high above this romantic and beautiful country of water and tule lands, steep hillsides and canons, rocky bluffs overhanging the straits. ”

“ You never know. There is no use trying to make it in there in a fog," she added. "It is bad enough when you can see."
While she talked with Johnson concerning the location of the wreck, Gregory found time to note the [Pg 99] towering cliffs which rose precipitously from the blue-green sea. Somewhere along that rock-crusted coast, he reflected bitterly, Diablo had claimed another of the Lang boats only a few months ago. Somewhere among the white-crested rocks his father and Bill Lang had met their death. He wondered where, but did not ask. Perhaps the girl would speak of it. ”

“ When you get weather out here, it's nasty, and it hits you all in a bunch."
As they neared the island the Pelican slowed down to wait for the Curlew which had been lagging astern.
"Jones must be having engine-trouble," commented Dickie Lang. "Or else Diablo's got him buffaloed too."
"What do you mean?" Gregory asked.
Lowering her voice so that it would not reach the two fishermen on the Pelican, she said: "They all give Diablo a wide berth. The fishermen are scared to death of the island. If you want to hear a lot of wild tales, just talk to some of my men at Legonia. Look at Manuel. ”

“ I went by the former, and began my journey by the bog or bogue walk, a road through a magnificent ravine, and then over Mount Diabolo. The Devil assumes to himself all the finest scenery in all countries. Of a delicious mountain tarn he makes his punch-bowl; he loves to leap from crag to crag over the wildest ravines; he builds picturesque bridges in most impassable sites; and makes roads over mountains at gradients not to be attempted by the wildest engineer. The road over Mount Diabolo is very fine, and the view back to Kingston very grand. ”

“ A misstep would hurl him to the bottom of the rock-lined gorge which was swallowed up in the mists at his feet. Suddenly he stopped and threw himself to full length on the ground. Far above him the solid whiteness of the fog wall was broken by irregular flashes of blue. To his ears came the sound of snapping spluttering flames.
Covering his head with his arms, he crossed himself. The devil was speaking from the hilltop. On two other occasions he had heard the crackling of the [Pg 309] flames near the old sheep-herder's shack on the crest of the hill. He had taken the wrong trail. ”

“ A few hours’ quiet steaming in the sunlight down the Sacramento River, past Rio Vista and Montezuma, through the gap in the Contra Costa Range, at which the grand volcanic peak of Monte Diablo stands sentinel watching over the Martinez Straits, and there opened to the south and west a vast mountain-surrounded bay. Volumes of cloud were rolling in unceasingly from the ocean, through the Golden Gate, past the fortified island of Alcatras, and spending themselves in the opposite shores of San Rafael, Benicia, and Vallejo. ”

“ The world went very well in those bright days of the long ago, when the wedding of El Sol and Maka Ina set all living things rejoicing. Green youth and sparkling happiness were everywhere. Only one there was—Diablo—who found in it poor comfort. He had no pleasure in the growing grass. The buttercups annoyed him with the gayness of their gold. It was at this time he chewed their stalks, so that many ever since have been flattened and mangled. And the cherry with its fragrant bloom he breathed on with his poison breath, so its limbs were burnt and blackened into horrid canker bumps. ”

“ And recollect that the top of the valley is more than half way to real heaven, and the Lord has many mansions away in the Sierra equal in power and glory to Yosemite, though not quite so open, and I venture to say that you will yet see the valley many times both in and out of the body.
I am glad you are going to the coast mountains to sleep on Diablo,—Angelo ere this. I am sure that you will be lifted above all the effects of your material work. There is a precious natural charm in sleeping under the open starry sky. ”

“ Deep, ever greening and blooming, or, in harvest-time, brown-yellow or earth-colored planes, most often cloud-likely bedewed early at morn, breathing life and enjoyment of life, so to say under the powerful ribs of mount Mĕnoreh, badly bursten and highly crowned, and the cloud-like tops of craters of more than three volcanoes, and the active Mĕrapi still vomitting death or destruction in their surroundings, but also producing new life on the soil all covered with time-worn volcanic-ruins. ”

“ That the sensitive plate of the camera will record a star never visible through even the strongest glass, and thus prove its existence, is a wonderful fact in stellar photography.
Cañon Diablo is one of the volcanic phenomena of Arizona,—a narrow chasm some two hundred and fifty feet deep, several miles long, and five or six hundred feet wide, which the Santa Fé road crosses on a wonderful steel spider-web bridge a few miles before reaching Flagstaff. It is one of the curious things for which the tourist is watching. ”

“ Then Gregory went on:
"But there's something else that's making them nervous, Lang. Something they are doing around that devil-island. What kinds of laws they're breaking out there nobody knows. They may be doing anything from shooting fish to catching chicken-halibut or baby barracuda. We don't know what. But we do know they're mighty touchy on who cruises round El Diablo. When our boats get around that infernal island something always happens. ”

“ The ground was also dyed with blood for several yards round, and where it had fallen the grass was withered up to the roots, as if scorched with fire. We also picked up a cluster of hairs—long, wiry, crooked hairs, barbed at the ends like fish-hooks; also three or four scales like fish-scales, only rougher, and as large as doubloons. The spot where the fight took place is now called La Cañada del Diablo, and I have heard that since that day the devil has never appeared corporeally to fight any man in the Banda Orientál. ”

“ Down the valley from the north floated in the air high above the tree-tops—far above the reach and power of man, an awful figure—the figure of a human skeleton, its ghastly proportions revealed by the flame and smoke emitted from the great sunken eyes, the distended nostrils and wide, grinning mouth. Great white arms beat and buffeted the air like the wings of a struggling vampire, while scream after scream rent the air.
It was the Aerial Demon of the Mountain, the scourge of the Black Hills—the terror of the Indian. ”

“ Satan had carried me no farther than the next ridge, when the forest frowned dark as twilight, and on the wind whirled flakes of snow. Over the next hollow, a white pall roared through the trees toward me. Hardly had I time to get the direction of the trail, and its relation to the trees nearby, when the storm enfolded me. Of his own accord Satan stopped in the lee of a bushy spruce. The roar in the pines equaled that of the cave under Niagara, and the bewildering, whirling mass of snow was as difficult to see through as the tumbling, seething waterfall. ”

“ Dickie stepped into the dory of the Pelican which Jones shoved into the water.
"I want to get Tom to the launch and have her ready to get under way," she explained to Gregory. "Will you stay and help Sorenson load the rest of the motor?"
Gregory nodded and set to work. Bandrist's eyes followed the departing skiff until it disappeared around the point. Then he motioned Gregory to one side and began to speak: "Do not let her come out here again," he said in a low voice. "Diablo is not a safe place for fishermen, much less a woman. My men will not forget you. ”

“ Over all, the young moon shed a pale, soft light, threw into deep shadow the hills towards the north, which rose abruptly to a height of 3000 feet, and tipped with a silver edge the peak of Monte Diavolo, whose lofty summit overlooks all the golden land between the great range of the Sierra Nevada and the ocean. It was a scene of peaceful beauty, well fitted to call forth the adoration of man to the great and good Creator. ”

“ An amphitheatre of dimensions sufficient for the Devil’s punch-bowl is formed by two volcanic ranges, once in connection, but obviously rent asunder, heaved outwards, and canted in opposite directions by some violent eruption that has forced an opening to the ocean. A sterility which is not to be surpassed invests the scene with an aspect most repulsive and forbidding. No tree varies the dreary prospect, no shrub relieves the eye, not even a flower lends its aid to enliven the wild and gloomy hollow, the fittest refuge that the imagination could picture for the lawless and the desperate. ”

“ As though a ghost had crept from the forest to warn Waylao, her shadow crept in front of her. Abduh’s monstrous silhouette also dodged in front of him, so grotesque, so hideous that it might well have been the true index of his mind expressed in his shadow to warn the mad girl. Suddenly they arrived at the hollow in the volcanic rock. It was the entrance to the mosque. Once in ages past that great cavern by the sea had been moulded by Nature’s volcanic passion—and now the children of those wild lands were lured into those old bowels wherein glowed the passions of a greater hell. ”

“ Already above vegetation, we looked out over all the valley south and west, observing its arabesque of forest, meadow, and chaparral, the files of pines which struggled up almost to our feet, and just below us the volcano slope strewn with red and brown wreck and patches of shrunken snowdrift.
Our climb up the steep western crater slope was slow and tiresome, quite without risk or excitement. The footing, altogether of lodged débris, at times gave way provokingly, and threw us out of balance. Once upon the spiry pinnacles which crown the rim, a scene of wild power broke upon us. ”

“ Where are the vineyards which must once have clothed the lower slopes, protected by the walls of the volcanic valley against the rigorous climate of a region over 4000 feet above the sea? Nature had blighted the scene with layers of lava and cinders; man reclaimed the spot with laborious patience, until the work perished under the curse of his fellow-man. But what enemy would penetrate to this hidden valley, concealed behind the most inaccessible zone of the border mountains, defended by the Devil’s gorge? Perhaps the appearance of the opposite cliff affords a clue to this mystery. ”

“ THE DEVIL AND THE DALLES In days when volcanoes were playing in the Northwest and the sternly beautiful valley of the Columbia was a hell of ash and lava, the fiend men of the land met at intervals on the heated rocks to guzzle and riot together. It was at one of these meetings in the third summer after Tacoma had stopped spouting that the devil urged a lesson from the growing peace and joy of nature, and prayed the fiend men to desist from killing and eating each other and live in love. ”