He poised above a country that looked as if it still hung upon the edge of chaos:  wild, fertile, massive, barren, luxuriant, crouching on the ragged line of the Pacific.  From his point of vantage he saw long ranges of stupendous mountains, some but masses of scowling crags, some green with forests of mammoth trees projecting their gaunt rigid arms above a carpet of violets; indolent valleys and swirling rivers; snow on the black peaks of the North; the riotous colour of eternal summer in the South.  Suddenly he uttered a sharp exclamation and swept downward, halting but a mile above the ground.  He frowned heavily, then smiled—­a long, placid, sardonic smile.  There appeared to be but few inhabitants in this country, and those few seemed to live either in great white irregular buildings, surmounted by crosses, in little brown huts near by, in the caves, or in hollowed trees on the mountains.  The large buildings were situated about sixty miles apart, in chosen valleys; they were imposing and rambling, built about a plaza.  They boasted pillared corridors and bright red tiles on their roofs.  Within the belfries were massive silver bells, and the crosses could be seen to the furthermost end of the valley and from the tops of the loftiest mountain.

“California!” exclaimed the Devil.  “I know of her.  Her scant history is outlined in the Scarlet Book.  I remember the points:  Climate, the finest, theoretically, in the world; satanically, simply magnificent.  I have waited impatiently for the stream of humanity to deflect thitherward, but priests will answer my present purpose exactly—­unless they are all too tough.  To continue, gold under that grass in chunks—­aha!  I shall have to throw out an extra wing in Hell!  Parched deserts where men will die cursing; fruitful valleys, more gratifying to my genius; about as much of one as of the other, but the latter will get all the advertising, and the former be carefully kept out of sight.  Everything in the way of animal life, from grizzly bears to fleas.  A very remarkable State!  Well, I will begin on the priests.”

He shot downward, and alighted in a valley whose proportions pleased his eye.  Its shape was oval; the bare hills enclosing it were as yellow and as bright as hammered gold; the grass was bronze-coloured, baking in the intense heat; but the placid cows and shining horses nibbled it with the contentment of those that know not of better things.  A river, almost concealed by bending willows and slender erect cottonwoods, wound capriciously across the valley.  The mission, simpler than some of the others, was as neatly kept as the farm of older civilizations.  Peace, order, reigned everywhere; all things drowsed under the relentless outpouring of the midsummer sun.

“It is well I do not mind the heat,” thought his Majesty; “but I am sensible of this.  I will go within.”

He drew a boot on his cloven foot, thus rendering himself invisible, and entered a room of the long wing that opened upon the corridor.  Here the temperature was almost wintry, so thick were the adobe walls.