Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/570

 550 or clearer-up of the ring—beginning, as will be seen, like most great geniuses, at the bottom of the ladder. This was in fair-time at Tenango. In due course he was taken on as an employé by the proprietor of the hacienda of San Diego de los Padres, a gentleman of sporting tastes, who gave him every advantage, believing he had discovered in him a future espada. This genial and discerning proprietor allowed Ponciano to banderillar some of the animals at branding-time, and transfix others with the rapier, and then to organize amateur bull-fights on the great open-air threshing-floor of the farm.

We find Ponciano starting out with a band of his own at the early age of twenty-one. He met with a very flattering reception. From that time on, for several years, he passed from one small town to another, giving exhibitions. He was at Cuatitlan among the rest, and I should not be surprised if he were the very one I saw there, though I preserved no programme, and was so interested in what was done at my first bull-fight that I thought very little of who did it. When the prohibition was raised, he finally came to complete at the capital the great fame of which he had already so well laid the foundation.

Don Ponciano's method of slaying—I speak now as a virtuoso—is not free from faults. These are probably due to a lack of acquaintance with the best models in early life. Your left hand, for instance, friend Ponciano, is by no means as dexterous as it should be, and this naturally often leads to some awkwardness at the supreme moment of the killing. But he has much ambition and is ever zealous to improve. He has no rival in the trick of placing banderillas on horseback, and in lassoing and throwing the bull by the tail. In the saddle he is the perfect type of the