Note 35 — Chapter IV · Elements.

The Hydra—the torrent which, cut off in one direction, makes many headways in others—has its survivals in the many diabolical names assigned to boiling springs and to torrents that become dangerously swollen. In California the boiling springs called ‘Devil’s Tea-kettle’ and ‘Devil’s Mush-pot’ repeat the ‘Devil’s Punch-bowls’ of Europe, and the innumerable Devil’s Dikes and Ditches. St. Gerard’s Hill, near Pesth, on which the saint suffered martyrdom, is believed to be crowded with devils whenever an inundation threatens the city; they indulge in fiendish laughter, and play with the telescopes of the observatory, so that they who look through them afterwards see only devils’ and witches’ dances!35 At Buda, across the river from Pesth, is the famous ‘Devil’s Ditch,’ which the inhabitants use as a sewer while it is dry, making it a Gehenna to poison them with stenches, but which often becomes a devastating torrent when thaw comes on the Blocksberg. In 1874 the inhabitants vaulted it over to keep away the normal stench, but the Hydra-head so lopped off grew again, and in July 1875 swallowed up a hundred people.36