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Updated: May 9, 2025
The writer has more than once seen the practice as exhibited in popular cafés whither both sexes resorted. At the bull-ring many of the common class of women had cigarettes between their lips. Sunday is an acknowledged gala-day in Madrid, though the attendance upon early mass is very general, especially among the women.
Outside the bull-ring the throng was denser than ever; from the street cars came pouring streams of people who ran for the entrance; the ticket-speculators rushed upon them with a shout; amidst the black multitude shone the white helmets of the mounted guards. From the inside of the ring came a muffled roar like the tide.
"If Cogan had never seen a bull-ring, he would right away have known this in Lima for one. It was a perfect circle, about two hundred feet across, packed with what looked like hard sand and surrounded by a stout stockade, and with seats enough for eight or ten thousand people.
The bull-ring seemed fast shut to the public when we approached it, but we found ourselves smilingly welcomed to the interior by the kindly mother in charge.
Activity and growth are manifest on all sides. There is a spacious alameda in the environs, but it is not kept in very good condition. The town has two capacious theatres, and a large bull-ring, which is infamously noted for its many fatal encounters. The bull-ring and the cockpit are two special blots upon this otherwise attractive place, attractive, we mean, as compared with most Mexican towns.
When we set out from the harbor to walk to the bull-ring, crowds of small boys ran after us making fun of the Doctor's fatness, calling out, "Juan Hagapoco, el grueso matador!" which is the Spanish for, "John Dolittle, the fat bullfighter."
These piteous wrecks that are my comrades here say we have reached the bottom of the scale, the final humiliation; they say that when a horse is no longer worth the weeds and discarded rubbish they feed to him, they sell him to the bull-ring for a glass of brandy, to make sport for the people and perish for their pleasure. To die that does not disturb me; we of the service never care for death.
I had gone in my boat one day to take soundings in shore, along the coast stretching from Vera Cruz to Anton Lizardo, when I saw a squadron of Mexican Lancers in their great white hats, looking like a squadron of picadors from a bull-ring, come galloping over the sand-hills. It was more than likely these gentry might fire their carbines at us, and we had no arms to reply with.
We know, for instance, something of the crude excesses of aboriginal Australian dances; we know more of the gross license of old Rome; we know the breadth of the jokes in medieval times, and the childish brutality of the bull-ring and the cockpit.
The evening gradually wore away, and at eight I paced the Cathedral Square, and for an hour loitered around the steps; but Pepito, also, failed to keep the rendezvous. 'As the next day was Sunday, I felt assured the most likely place to find Pepito, would be the bull-ring.
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