Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/550

 530 not approve of it! Nothing can come of it save the danger that "we first endure, then pity, then embrace." There is little likelihood of our thinking too well of men at the best, and perhaps the bull-fight, the prize-fight, the hanging, the tour with a detective in the slums, and the tabooed book and newspaper had all better be imagined than experienced, except, of course, by the literary man, whose business is—is it not?—to see life in every particular.

It was Sunday. No one at all familiar with the subject requires it to be stated, for Sunday or a saint's feast is the great and peculiar occasion for the sport. It is the only day on which its ardent patrons have the leisure to devote themselves to it in thorough-going style. Exhibitions have been tried on Mondays, and also in the evening by electric light, but these have met with only small success.

A little special train of tram-cars, drawn by mules, deposited us at Cuatitlan at half-past three in the afternoon, the usual hour for beginning.

The sport was forbidden by law in the Federal District, the domain corresponding to the District of Columbia with us; but it was said that Señor Delfin Sanchez, who owned the railway, had much to do with encouraging it at Cuatitlan, by way of making the more business for his road. The plaza de toros, or bull-ring, was a great elliptical edifice of wood, commonly built, but impressive within by its size and arrangement. The main body of seats rose in a sloping bank, like those at the circus, from a barrier in front to a series of private boxes, the lumbreras. Columns wound with red and white draperies, with an appearance like that of barbers' poles, separated the boxes. The cornice above them was studded with wooden urns. The whole was without a roof of any kind, and over it