em no more. They did this service for
others. Were they fine-fibered enough to feel these losses, the sorrow
we feel for their exit would be intensified; but their centuries of
misrule have certified to their all but utter lack of any finer
sentiment or sense of high responsibility. Give them what honor we
may. Recall their departed glory, and let it light the sky, if only
for a moment, like a flash of lightning. Spaniards were little less
given to naming their settlements "Saint" than the French. From
Mexico, up the long Pacific Coast, they affixed names which will remain
perpetually as the sole memorial that once these banished dons held
sway in the United States. These names cluster in the Southern United
States, touching immediately on their chief dependency, Mexico; but are
still in evidence farther away, though growing scanter, as footprints
in a remote highway. Rio Grande, Del Norte, Andalusia, and the
charming name affixed to a charming mountain range, Sierra Nevada,--how
these names rehabilitate a past! Nevada and Andalusia! One needs
little imagination to see the flush that gathered on the dusky cheek of
the old Spanish discoverer when he calmed, in part, his homesickness by
giving his wanderings the name of the dear home from which he came, and
kindled his pride into a fire, like the conflagration of mountain
pines, by telling the New World the names of his ancestral land. But
his "San" and "Santa" are frequent as tents upon a battle-field when
the battle is spent. "Corpus Christi"--how Spanish and Catholic that
is! San Antonio, Santa Fe, Cape St. Lucas. In Florida: Rio San Juan,
Ponce de Leon, Cape San Blas, Hernando, Punta Rosa, Cerro de Oro, are
indicative of the growing communities in that peninsula after the
invasion located at St. Augustine. But of all the parts of the United
States, New Mexico is most honeycombed with Spanish locatives. Passing
that way, one seems not to be in America, but in Spain. Spain is
everywhere. Their names are here strewn thick as battle soldiers
sleeping on the battle-field: Las Colonias, Arayo Salado, Don Carlos
Hill, Cerillos, Dolores, San Pambo, Canon Largo, Magdalene Mountains,
San Pedro. Thence these names creep up into Utah, though there they
are never numerous: Santa Clara, Escalante Desert, Sierra Abaja; and
farther north, reaching to all but hand-clasp with the French Du Chasne
River, is San Rafael River. St. Xavier, San Miguel, Santa Monica,
Santa