Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/93



I WAS told after my arrival in Mexico, that unless I remained some time I was likely to lose the three great "amusements" of Mexico, to wit: a Revolution—an Earthquake—and a Bull Fight. The two former I would gladly have dispensed with; and as to the latter, civilization had recently introduced the Opera, and the cadenzas of Italian vocalists had been substituted for the roars of the dying bull.

But I was to be gratified by the sight of at least one of these recreations.

A fight came off rather unexpectedly in the Plaza de Toros, an immense circus, erected when this sport was in its palmy days in Mexico.

It was Sunday, and the people were unoccupied. The idlers had a few spare medios, picked up by toil, beggary or pilfering, during the week, and, as to the rich, it was expected that of course they would be gratified by the sight of an exhibition from which they had been long debarred.

I have a great objection to all these brutal displays, but I hold it to be a man's duty to see a specimen of everything in the course of his life. In Europe I went to see dissections and the guillotine, and on that principle, in Mexico I went to a bull fight.

The expectations of the projectors of the day's sport were not disappointed. The two tiers of boxes and the circle below of this immense theatre, were filled to the very brim of the arena with not less than eight thousand men, women and children. The hour of opening was four o'clock—the day warm and cloudless—and the sun shone brightly over the motley assemblage in their gay and varied costumes. The sunny side of the edifice was devoted to the plebs—the other half to the patricians, or half-a-dollar payers, who thereby enjoyed the luxury of shade.

We arrived too late to see the entrance of the first bull—he was already in the arena, and the picadors were goading him with their long lances, while the six gayly-dressed, lithe and active matadors teased him with red cloaks, which they flirted within a few feet of his horns, and enabled them, as he sprung to gore the garment, to display their agility in avoiding the deadly blow of his horns.