Page:Mexico of the Mexicans.djvu/125

Rh squandered upon it, and its patronage by the highest in the land as well as by the lower classes ensures its continuance and "respectability." Sunday is the day par excellence for the Mexican bull-fight. The ring, which is capable of containing a very large audience, is divided into two principal sections: the Sombra, the shady part, where sit the élite; and the Sol, or sunny portion, where crowd the groundlings. An animated hum arises from the roofless arena, which is soon to become a volcano of human passions.

On no occasion is a Mexican so "taken out of himself" as during a bull-fight. The peon, usually so grave and reserved, the aristocrat, so proud and dignified, display more animation during a corrida than at any other Mexican social function. He expands, becomes intensely, indeed wildly, excited, and beneath a seemingly civilised exterior are seen flashes and glimpses of that brutality or callousness to pain which is perhaps more obviously evident among the peoples of Latin-America than among other peoples, even those lower in the scale of civilisation. To the question "Is this people cruel?" the answer must be in the affirmative. The ancestors of the greater portion of them, the Aztecs and their related stocks, were people who in the name of religion perpetrated the most ruthless barbarities. Can it be expected, then, that their admixture with the white race which introduced the Inquisition and the bull-fight has softened them at all? But we must remember that it is not so many years ago that bull-baiting was carried on in our own land!

The spirited animals baited to death in these orgies of a sanguinary-minded people are reared and fed in extensive, wild prairies. They graze in herds, and are tended by vaqueros, or herdsmen. Special attention is paid to their purity of breed, and great care is exercised in the record of their pedigree, which is always advertised in the bills, and forms a chief feature in the programme of the bull-fight.

The bulls do not take part in a corrida until they are about