Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/564

 544 a little here, to decide that it really is a rather unjust world after all. Even these poor pages of mine must needs be of more service and value to humanity than one of Mazzantini's performances, and yet I assure the reader it is but rarely that I get twenty thousand dollars for a whole chapter.

The two principal rings are respectively those of the Paseo, on the fine avenue leading to Chapultepec, and that of Colon, in the suburb of La Coloñia. The city rings are generally one story higher than those in the country. The one lately finished for Ponciano Diaz cost about six thousand dollars. They hold from three to eight thousand people—which still leaves something to be attained, it will be seen, for we read of one at Murcia, in Spain, holding eighteen thousand. Fancy these eighteen thousand people, all as one man, glowing and thrilling over the sufferings of an unfortunate animal. Surely this can be no school of the manly virtues, the higher achievements of civilization.

On great occasions the bulls have individual names. The names do not incline to be of a complimentary sort. We are at the Plaza del Paseo, for instance. First enters "Porfiriado," "a dappled chestnut," partridge-eyed, "with fine markings, and front powerfully armed." "Porfiriado" stands for rogue or rascal. He is followed by "Bellaco," the obstinate; next comes "Alacran," the scorpion; the fourth is "Alicante," poison snake.

It is an insult in Mexico to give the name of a human being to an animal, and no little rage and disturbance were caused lately by a fancy that some people discovered a personal intent in the titles of two of the bulls at the Plaza de Colon. Said the leading newspaper, the Monitor Republicano, in its comment on this circumstance, "It appears that this barbarous amusement is creating