Santa Ana

“ But there is an interesting little church, called Santa Ana, built in the time of Alfonso the Wise, in which are some excellent pictures, and a curious tomb of the sixteenth century made of azulejos. It was in this unpromising quarter the two Christian maidens, Justa and Rufina, lived fifteen hundred years ago or more. Some pagan women coming to their shop one day to buy vases for the worship of Venus, they refused to sell any for the purpose, and the women fell upon their stock of dishes and broke them to pieces. The saints threw the images of Venus into the ditch to express their abhorrence. ”

“ If one should not judge humanity from outward appearance, the procedure is even less wise in dealing with a collection of human habitations. Feminine powder and rouge are as mere toys in the matter of guile compared with the alluring scenic effect that a city is capable of producing by means of bricks and mortar. Judged from the summit of the hill without, Santa Ana presents an even more inviting appearance than that of Rivera. Once within the walls the aspects of the situation alter abruptly. Santa Ana possesses one spot of beauty, it is true. ”

“ Santa Ana Plaza is the heart of the city, and there is no hour of the day or night that there are not people there. If you really wish to see the world go by, sit on the stone bench at Santa Ana Plaza and look about you. If you stay long enough, you may see anybody, from the latest naked brown baby to the last chosen president of any country you may name.
Sitting in the plaza is a business by itself in this country. The North American uses a park as a short cut, cross-corners, to get somewhere. But with the tropic citizen, the plaza is an end in itself. ”

“ Santa Ana was but one of a breed of which Spanish America for the last twenty-five years has been a teeming mother—soldiers of fortune, who, by the sword or the musket-ball, have risen to supreme power, and by the sword or the musket-ball have fallen from it. That breed is not extinct; the very last intelligence from Peru tells of one who has fallen there as Yturbide, and Mina, and Guerrero, and Santa Ana have fallen in Mexico. The same soil which produced them is yet fertile to produce others. ”

“ Nadeau Park was projected as a town at the junction of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé's Ballona road and the Southern Pacific. Santa Ana, too, after 577 its sale in June of over eighty thousand dollars' worth of land, came forward in the summer with this confident salutation:
THIS IS PURE GOLD!!!
Santa Ana,
The Metropolis of Southern California's Fairest Valley!
Chief Among Ten Thousand, or the One
Altogether Lovely!
Beautiful! Busy! Bustling! Booming! It
Can't be Beat! ”

“ The thoroughfares are scrupulously named, after Spanish fashion; in Fernando Po they labelled even the bush-roads. The substantial houses with green balconies are white, bound in brown edgings of trachyte, basalt, and lava: here and there a single story of rude construction stands like a dwarf by the side of its giant neighbour.
The huge and still unfinished cathedral is well worth a visit. It is called after Santa Ana, a personage in this island. ”

“ Few traders and no missionaries had come to them, and they showed a low rate of infection. A friendly, backward Negroid people, they were endangered by their own hospitality. Charley One Arm, the policeman, our fierce black guide, couldn’t understand us when we refused the temporary gift of two island daughters. I went away dreading what might happen when more trading ships came in.
Santa Ana lay so near that one of their canoes, bastard ebony with mother-of-pearl insets, could take you there in an hour or two. Yet the Santa Ana folk were light-skinned and their features almost Caucasian. ”

“ In 1687, during one of the Spanish efforts to reconquer New Mexico, Santa Ana was destroyed and her people fled. Later, at the urging of de Vargas, the modern pueblo was established, along with the church now standing there. The population of Santa Ana is nearly 400. Its annual festival takes place in August. It is often difficult to find many of the people at the main pueblo for they spend most of the growing season at El Ranchito, to the east in the Rio Grande Valley. ”

“ Santa Ana, built in 1146 in imitation of the church of the Holy Sepulchre (as it was then) , with a curious fourteenth-century cloister placed at an angle to the main building, and the simple{20} graceful arches of the chapel of Montesion, where are hung the Turkish ensigns won by Spanish valour at Lepanto.
One instinctively searches at Barcelona for monuments of civic state befitting a city of such antiquity and dignity. Happily such are not lacking and have been preserved to us. ”

“ Santa Ana is in the orange, lemon and walnut region of southern California, and in the only important celery-growing district of the state; the celery is grown in great quantities in the large district known as the “ Peatlands ” (about 9 m. from the city) , which is under laid by a deposit of peat from 1 to 100 ft. deep. Other important products of the county are petroleum, barley, sugar beets, apricots and lima beans. Santa Ana was first platted in 1869 and was incorporated in 1888. Its growth since 1900 has been rapid. ”

“ Santa Ana has a fine, large, central business street, with new and costly brick blocks containing stores of every description. In this climate, however, we can see no necessity for ice, and the manufacturer and mixer of cool drinks can but find his business unprofitable. Up and down this street a line of cars runs all day long at fixed hours, connecting with other lines in Tustin and Orange. A trip or two on any of the lines is one of real pleasure. ”

“ The gunboat Santa Ana, bound for Manaos, had come up the river and passed the bar at Frias. Just before she reached the _embouchure_ of the Rio Negro she hoisted her colors and saluted the Brazilian flag. ”

“ On the altar, there are angels with flambeaux in their hands, of wooden carving. These are deemed the work of the Indians. There are also several old statues of the saints, including San Joaquin, Santa Ana, San Juan Capistrano, and Santa Colette. In the sodality chapel, also, there are statues of San Francisco and San Antonio. The altar rail of the restored Santa Clara church was made from the beams of the old Mission. ”

“ Returning, then, [once more] to the location of the Queres nation,— [after] proceeding twelve leagues to the westward of its last pueblo, Santa Ana, one arrives at the Peñol of Ácoma which has occasioned the loss of so many lives of Spaniards and Indian friends, both on account of its being a sheer impregnable rock cliff, and because of the valor of its inhabitants, who probably number two thousand souls. Last year, 1629, God [101] granted that we should convert them to peace, so that to-day they have a Religious who is instructing them in the Christian faith and baptizing them. ”

“ The vines seldom bear a second crop of any importance. Sometimes in October the district is visited by a warm and dry desert wind called the Santa Ana wind. It comes from the cañon of the Santa Ana river, and originates, no doubt, in the Mojave desert, and rising high up in the air is again precipitated over the hills on the lowlands towards the ocean. This Santa Ana wind is always welcome. It hastens the drying of the grapes just as the Terral or land winds from the plains of La Mancha hasten the drying of the grapes of Malaga in Spain. ”

“ The next chapel—that of Santa Ana—is not so large, but designed in far better taste. It is Gothic, and dates from the fifteenth century. Here are some beautiful tombs, particularly that of the founder of the chapel. But the most attractive object is a picture, placed at an elevation which renders difficult the appreciation of its merits without the aid of a glass,—a Holy Family, by Andrea del Sarto. It is an admirable picture; possessing all the grace and simplicity, combined with the fineness of execution, of that artist. ”

“ San Fernando, Florence, Compton, Downey City, Westminster, Orange, Tustin City, Centralia, Pomona, and Artesia may be mentioned as leading examples. The "colony" government is of a simple sort, and consists of a justice of the peace, constable, water overseer, and school trustees. Anaheim, settled by Germans, was one of the first established colonies, and has become a town of importance. Santa Ana had a special bustle at present, as the terminus, for the time being, of the railroad in process of building from Los Angeles to San Diego. ”

“ After passing an hour at the inn, where there were provisions in abundance to make amends for the scantiness of our morning fare, we proceeded towards Nŏpălūcă, observing with pleasure, as we advanced, that a number of little farms gave the surest possible indication of a more fertile soil. At Santa Ana, a village about two leagues from Ojo de Agua, we were received with great politeness by the Cura, an old man who came out to meet us in his sacerdotal dress. ”

“ Born in Colombia, but long resident in Peru, he was a gentleman of the old school, keenly interested, not only in the administration and economic progress of his plantation, but also in the intellectual movements of the outside world. He entered with zest into our historical-geographical studies. The name Uiticos was new to him, but after reading over with us our extracts from the Spanish chronicles he was sure that he could help us find it. And help us he did. Santa Ana is less than thirteen degrees south of the equator; the elevation is barely 2000 feet; the “winter” nights are cool ”

“ The garrison had succeeded in getting inside the walls about thirty bushels of corn and eighty beef cattle; so there was no danger of famine. The big courtyard was in the rear. The convent projected out in front of the courtyard. To the left angle of the convent was the chapel or Mission of the Alamo. Santa Ana had come across the desert with 5,000 men. To the demand for surrender, Travis answered with a cannon shot. The Mexican leader then hung the red flag above his camp and ordered the band to play "no quarter." ”

“ These facts were known in the Philippines, and from them the Filipinos drew comparisons unfavorable to the boastful Spaniards.
When the rich Philippine galleon Santa Ana was captured off the California coast by Thomas Candish, “three Page 16boys born in Manila” were taken on board the English ships. Afterwards Candish sailed into the straits south of “Luçon” and made friends with the people of the country. There the Filipinos promised “both themselves, and all the islands thereabouts, to aid him whensoever he should come again to overcome the Spaniards.” ”

“ The principal cities are San Salvador, San Miguel, Santa Ana, which has been the capital, Cojutepeque, which has also been the seat of government, Sonsonate, Zacatecoluca, San Vicente, Sensuntepeque, Chalatenango, Santa Rosa, Ahuachapán, and Santa Tecla or Nueva San Salvador. ”

“ The mountains are full of fragrant flowers, and shelter a great number of wild boars. There are many species of birds, and fowls are reared in considerable abundance.
Although those islands were densely populated, the people were so barbarous that they seemed not to possess reason. For that cause our religious wished to cultivate that forest in order to sow the seed of the gospel. Notwithstanding [their savagery] , father Fray Francisco de San Nicolás, accompanied by another priest, named Fray Diego de Santa Ana, and a lay brother, went to the chief island of the Calamianes. ”

“ The Salvadorans had their headquarters at Santa Ana. The armies which were to encounter each other on the field of battle were the most numerous Central America had ever seen. Barrios with 8,000 or 9,000 men laid siege of Ahuachapan. Uraga stationed himself at Chalchuapa with about 1,500, and Chingo was left with a handful of men. ”

“ Santa Ana, the wife of the man to whom we brought letters, doctored us with chicken tea, declaring “people died with the fever in this country who would not eat.”
The soil is well adapted to the growth of the sugar-cane. We are told the country far west is a prairie for a long distance, covered with fine pasture. The Indians are called “Muras;” they are fond of trading, and less warlike than some others, of whom little is known. ”

“ At four leagues from this village we found a village of five houses which was uninhabited. Two leagues from the latter runs a big stream and, according to what I was told, this stream runs into the Santa Ana River. At a short distance from the creek we spent the night.
August 14. This morning we set out in the same direction as the previous day. At two leagues we came upon a very old Indian who could hardly walk. Having instructed him in everything necessary to baptism, and he having voluntarily accepted the Holy Rite I proceeded to baptize him on the trail where we found him. ”

“ Everywhere are school-houses of artistic designs, most magnificent ones in the older settlements, smaller but tasty ones in those of almost yesterday. As we pass along the mesa, the upper San Bernardino valley, closed in by steep and lofty mountains, lies on our right, and in front the Santa Ana river courses through the center of the valley, with its vast broad river bottom covered with wild vegetation, pastures or cultivated fields. We cross several ditches, one laid in cement, with the water running in them as clear as that in the washbowl. ”

“ Gonzalez said that during the negotiations there were 2,300 men in Ahuachapan and 2,000 in Santa Ana; of the latter only one half were well armed. The Guatemalans had every advantage—numbers, arms, discipline, and abundant resources of every kind. They had but few desertions, whereas from the Salv. ranks there had been many. Barrios' army on entering Santa Ana exceeded 9,000 men. ”