Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/509

Rh cage. And so the entertainment ended. I regret to add that when the bull was raised to his feet it was found that his back was so injured that he could not stand and he must be killed. The buzzards had already gathered in clouds in the vicinity, as if conscious that a feast was being prepared. This is Sunday amusement in Vera Cruz. But it was death on the bull.

But the bull does not always get the worst of it, in encounters with man and beast, in Mexico and elsewhere. I remember a bull and bear fight in New Orleans, in which the Attakapas bull General Jackson, doubled up the bear like an old shoe at the first charge, and made him bellow for help in a few seconds. I regret to say, that on that occasion my sympathies were so strongly with the bear at the start, that I lost all the money that my boyish industry had gathered together in several months. After the lapse of many years I got even at Vera Cruz.

A distinguished Mexican gentleman—whose name I suppress for various reasons—told us, one day on the trip from Guanajuato to Mexico, of his experience in bull-fighting in one of the larger cities of the Republic. It is the custom in bull-fighting countries, for the young bloods of the first families, who wish to distinguish themselves, to appear in the Plaza de Toros as amateurs, and fight the bull on important occasions. When Maximilian arrived in Mexico, a special gran funcion was gotten up for his benefit, and the young men of some of the oldest and most aristocratic of the Mocho families of the capital, appeared in the ring as picadors and matadors, the royal couple presiding at the brutal entertainment and delivering the prizes to the heroes of the conflict.