Blackfoot news. (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1891-1902, 1895-05-04
A CALIFORNIA MARVEL

A Shadow Thrown Thirty Miles. From
one Mountain to Another.
just about four times a year the
sunrise visitor to Mount Diablo's sum
NIT may witness a rare phenomenon,
the ..shadow of the devil, " talked of
vaguely for scores of years all along
the Contra Costa county side, says
the San Francisco Chronicle. A long
time ago the Spaniards who dwelt
here and there about Diablo's foothills
noticed the phenomena and gave it
the name it still bears, investing it
with superstitious fancies, and hold
ing it to be thing significant of
good or ill. The sheepman or rancher
whom sunrise found near enough the
peak on the quarterly shadow days to
see the strange landscape freak would
cross himself piously and go home be-
lieving he had an omen. The first
photograph ever taken of the shadow
was made recently from the top of
Diablo few minutes after sunrise. 1t
Is in a way notable picture, and the
taking Of it was extremely difficult.
as the lights and shades are varied
and extremely hard to manage. The
party which went up Diablo was
composed of a quartet of cyclers, one
of whom, J. j. B. Argenta. is an en-
thusiastic member of the Camera
club. At a. IN. Sunday the party
rose and went to the summit, pushing
their wheels before them in the dark
ness over the toughest sort OF noun
tain road. By the almanac the sun
was scheduled to appear that morn
ing at 6:32 o'clock. but it was 1884 be-
fore he appeared to the waiting quar-
tet. At $40 o'clock the shadow APP
peared and the picture was taken. 1t
is no wonder that the Spaniards called
it the DEVILS shadow. 1t has the APP
pearance of the neither regions and is
mysterious. 1t only lasts for few
minutes and then is swept out Of the
early morning scene as breath from
loOking-glass fades. If the observer
did not know Just where to look for it
it might easily come and pass for an
other three months and the watcher
not be any the wiser.
There is a simple enough explana-
ton OF the shadow. Dlablo is fully
1000 feet above the other mountains
in the range about it, and when the
Sun rises behind it triangular shadow
OF the great conical peak is thrown
against Grizzly, which is back OF
Berkeley, thirty miles away. The
town west Of Diablo. Walnut Creek.
h. 1,f% 81 IA al, Df
hills that surround Diablo like brill
liants around a stone OF the first
water. are still in darkness. The two
large valleys on either side seem
almost black when the heavy shadow
is thrown on the scene slantingly clear
and sudden. The lights that set of
the shadow are peculiar in the ex-
IRENE, and that is what makes photog-
raphy up there such a delicate and
difficult matter. On the right side of
the mountain the light nearest to the
black line that accentuates the shadow
was palest yellow, shading gradually
into green, until it was lost in the
green of the hills. On the left the
line was reddish, and the shadow itself
was blue black. No doubt Grizzly is
overshadowed every morning by its
pre-eminent neighbor, thirty miles
away, but the atmosphere is seldom
kindly enough to allow one to see it
from Diablo. On this Sunday morn
ing there was thin haze, but it was
not enough to blot out the shadow.
No one ever seems to have seen the
shadow from the intermediate low
lands, in darkness.