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They were round, and except over the stage there was no roof. The rich onlookers who could afford to pay well sat in "boxes" on the stage itself, and the other onlookers sat or stood in the uncovered parts. Part of a theater is still called the pit, which helps to remind us that the first theaters may have served as "cock-pits" or "bear-pits" too as well as theaters.
There are three large churches in Matanzas, a well appointed and spacious theatre, a bull-ring, and cock-pits. Statistics show that the custom-house receipts of the port reach about two million dollars annually.
I visited the theatres, attended cock-pits and bull-fights, in the hope that the excitement would afford me relief from the fascinating spell: but it was useless, I was a haunted man. 'One night, returning from the opera, at about ten o'clock, I was stopped by a large crowd at the corner of the Calle Plateros.
"There are worse places than cock-pits; for, mark me, I never bet no, not on a horse-race, even; and that is an occasion on which any gentleman might venture a few guineas, in a liberal, frank, way. There are so few amusements for people of education in this country, Madam Littlepage, that one is not to be too particular.
The parochial priest of San Diego corresponded to the Pope in the Vatican; the alferez of the Civil Guard to the King of Italy in the Quirinal, but both in the same proportion as the sauali or native wood and the nipa cock-pits corresponded to the monuments of marble and coliseums. And in San Diego, as in Rome, there was continual trouble.
San Diego was like Rome; not the Rome of the time of Romulus, when he marked out the walls with a plough, nor when, later, he bathed in his own blood and that of others and dictated laws to the world: no, San Diego was like the Rome of contemporaneous history, with this difference instead of being a city of marble, monuments and coliseums, it was a city of saualî and cock-pits.
There is one prominent vice to which the Monteros are indisputably addicted; namely, that of gambling. It seems to be a natural as well as a national trait, the appliances for which are so constantly at hand in the form of lottery tickets and the cock-pits that they can hardly escape the baleful influences.
This, Ford tells us, was an ancient cofradiá to Isis, which paid for her culto. Cock-fighting is still practised in most of the Spanish towns, as well as in Valencia, the regular cock-pits being constantly frequented in Madrid; but it is looked upon as suited only to barrio's bajos, and is not much, if at all, patronised even by the middle classes.
Gloom and sour visages prevailed, the maypoles were down, the play-houses were closed, the bear-gardens were empty, the cock-pits were desolate; and a saddened population, impoverished and depressed by the sacrifices that had been exacted and the tyranny that had been exercised in the name of Liberty, were ground under the iron heel of Cromwell's red-coats.
The city is not large enough to support a bull-ring, but cock-pits are to be found all over the island, and the Sabbath is the chosen day for their exhibitions. It must be a very small and very poor country town in Cuba which has not its cock-pit.
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