in the sunlight--steamers flashing their path on
its bosom; and tiny white specks scudding in the breeze. Below is the
city, its houses, small, and closed in, like toy villages in Christmas
boxes; whilst the slopes around are green with fresh grass; and here
and there are thick clusters of eucalyptus and pines. The ocean is
partly hidden from view by a peak, which rises directly to the west,
and is separated from that on which one is standing by a deep and
thickly wooded valley. Descending, by means of a narrow winding path,
one passes through dense clumps of hickory, chestnut, mountain ash,
and walnut trees, whose strong lateral branches afford ample
protection from the sun, and at the same time furnish playgrounds to
innumerable bright-eyed squirrels. Further down one comes upon gentle
elms, succeeded by sassafras and locust--these, in their turn,
succeeded by the softer linden, red bud, catalpa, and maple; and at
the foot of the declivity, and in the bottom of the valley, wild
shrubbery, interspersed with silver willows, and white poplars. Still
following the path down the vale, in a southerly direction, one, at
length, finds oneself in an amphitheatre, shut in on all sides by
trees and bushes of a still greater variety; here and there, a
gigantic and much begnarled oak; here, a triple-stemmed tulip tree of
some eighty feet in height, its glossy, vivid green leaves and profuse
blossoms presenting a picture of unsurpassed beauty and splendour;
there, equally beautiful, though in marked contrast, a tall and
slender silver birch. The floor of the amphitheatre is, for the most
part, grass--soft, thick, velvety and miraculously green. The silence
is such as makes it wholly inconceivable, that so vast a city as San
Francisco can be little over six miles distant. Though one may strain
one's ears to the utmost, nothing is to be heard but the occasional
tinkling of a cow-bell, the lowing of cattle and the desultory note of
birds. It is the perfect quiet which Nature alone can give; and it so
impressed Hamar that he at once decided that this was the very spot
essential for the ceremony of initiation into the Black Art.

The locality selected, the night had next to be chosen--and the
conditions demanding that on the night of the initiation there must be
a new moon, cusp of seventh house, and conjoined with Saturn, in
opposition to Jupiter,[16] Hamar and his confederates had to wait
exactly three weeks, from the date of the con