144 NEW TEACKS IN NOETH AMEEICA, 



pagoda in the centre for the hand. Around three sides of this 

 square stand the principal shops and business houses ; along 

 the fourth stands the low pile of adohe buildings — 200 

 years old — which is still called the Palace. Much of this old 

 palace was being cleared away when we were there j and the 

 workmen found, amongst other curious relics, a smelting fur- 

 nace, which had been completely bricked uj) on all sides ; and 

 from the ashes pieces of coal were taken out, showing that, 

 more than a centiuy ago, the Spaniards had discovered that 

 mineral, and used it for smelting. 



How strange the Spanish nomenclature seems to us ! These 

 champions of the Cross have stamped the names of their saints 

 and the technicalities of their faith on every mountain and 

 valley, river and plain ; and, not content with this, they have 

 exhausted the long catalogue of their saints and holy epithets 

 in lavishly naming their childi-en. 



There is scarcely a family without a Jesus, or a village 

 without a fair sprinkling of fallen Angelletas ; and yet it may 

 be because we cannot realise without an effort the symbolic 

 meaning of many of these terms, that they appear to us almost 

 like wholesale blasphemy, disguised though they be in euphony 



sugar-coated by what Byi-on would caU " the soft bastard 

 Latin that melts upon the tongue." Sante Te, the " City 

 of the Holy Faith ' ' was, when chiistened, the only spot in 

 the midst of a new realm of pagans upon which the Cross 

 stood, and fi-om which the light of Chi-istianity shot its rays 

 into the moral darkness aroimd. Ear up in the mountains, 

 some Jesuit missionary, travel-worn and exhausted, encoun- 

 tered the farthest source of the Eio Grande; and after a 

 refreshmg draught of its cool, sparkling waters, he crossed 

 himself, and called it, in thankfulness, " El Sangre de Cristo. 

 A little lower down, two streams joined it ; and here some 



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