Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/793

Rh over, the multitude turned with haste to the profane entertainments, notably the bull-fight, for which one of the city squares was usually reserved; or to the boisterous amusements of the fair-ground with its gambling, cock-fighting, and other sports, combined of course with drinking and other excesses glaringly in contrast to the solemnity of the day.

Cock-fighting was a favorite sport among all classes, and under its alluring excitement rich and poor, noble and beggar, freely mingled their shouts and bets. While hardly any restrictions were imposed on brutal pastimes of this nature, gambling with dice, cards, and other implements was subject to a number of prohibitions, which embraced certain games of hazard, limited the stakes of a person to ten pesos de oro a day, and excluded from any contact with the vice judges, agents of merchants, and some other classes. Safeguards were no doubt required among a people with whom the passion for gambling, so prevalent already among the Spaniards, was greatly intensified by a frivolous and impulsive nature; yet the government fostered it in another direction by extending royal patronage over lotteries. An official institution of this kind was established in 1770, with fourteen drawings a year, and prizes ranging as high as twelve thousand pesos. Within fifteen years the government made a profit of over a million pesos.

For a people so addicted to the drama as the Spanish, and boasting such names as Lope de Vega and