the avenging deity, and bereft of sense was led through the city in female apparel, stricken with mania, with a double sun and a double Thebes before his eyes, finally to be torn to pieces by women. First of all she was made to reveal her mystery, held sacred to the memories of time; for which extortion, like another Pythia, she was placed upon a tripod over the chasm Cassotis, and for a Delphic temple choosing the snow-powdered Sierra, and for the mephitic exhalations the less offensive incense from odorous pines.
Native to sublimated airs and all-engendering sunshine, her intoxication partook more of youthful revels than chronic intemperance; nevertheless, thou wast drunk, California, as thou well knowest; as drunk as Agave when tearing in pieces her own son whom she took for a lion's cub. Thine hills were drunk from the fruit of their own vines; and in the great valley was heard the sullen roar of hell echoing hollow on the ear. All this was exceedingly disgraceful, and especially repulsive in young and lovely woman; whereat, toward the immaculate east, conventional spinsters of untried chastity blushed and hung their heads, though never refusing to receive the fruits of sin.
Between two mountain systems stretches the valley of California, an elliptical, trough-like plain, five hundred miles in length by seventy-five in width; a vast amphitheatre, from whose arena circling terraces rise up to the lofty canopy of a pearl and beryl sky—colossal benches, whereon the gods might sit and watch the strange doings of men below.
Although not gods we some day may be; all gods were once men, or something worse. Therefore come sit with me upon the plateau-shelf up over the hill Mokelumne, near the source of the Stanislaus, where sometime sat Nemesis, eyeing the pilgrims as they entered the Golden Gate, and measuring out to them
