tell you, with an earnestness which impresses you with the sincerity of their belief in what they say, that three fourths of a century ago a vaguero, chasing a stray band of cattle, ascended the mountain nearly to the summit, when he came suddenly upon a cavern from which issued great sheets of flame and clouds of sulphurous smoke, and he felt at once that he stood at the door of the abode of the Enemy of Mankind. Crossing himself with trembling hand, he devoutly repeated a prayer to Mary Mother, and turning his horse's head, rode regardless of risk to life and limb, looking not backward until he stood among his friends in the valley below, and told them of the wonder he had seen. From that time the mountain bore the name of him who was supposed to make his abode in its depths, and no man's foot intruded among its lonely defiles and savage canons until the Los Americanos, who feared neither God, man, nor devil, came and possessed the land, carried their surveying instruments to its summit, and there set up a rude monument of stone, which serves as a base for the surveys throughout all Alta California. The fire which the vaguero beheld, or thought he beheld, has burned out long years ago, if it ever existed; the cavern, if ever there was a cavern, has been closed to human eyes, and the superstitious dread with which the mountain was regarded has passed away with the simple people we have dispossessed, and the order of things which we have overturned. Thus much for the mountain as we see it at a distance, and the name it bears.
It was a pleasant afternoon early in the month
