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Updated: June 9, 2025
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.
Martin's have undergone a mutilation, and that the place which has obtained the modern name of Bull-ring, and which is used as a market for corn and herbs, was once an appropriation of the church, though not used for internment; because the church is evidently calculated for a town of some size, to which the present church-yard no way agrees, being so extremely small that the ancient dead must have been continually disturbed, to make way for the modern, that little spot being their only receptacle for 900 years.
Outside you can see a ring of light-coloured stones, called the bull-ring, where bulls, provided at the cost of the Corporation, were baited. Until 1840 our Berkshire town of Wokingham was famous for its annual bull-baiting on St. Thomas's Day.
Their conversation was restricted to the bull-ring and the cockpit, to cards and women. Their chief aim seemed to be to stagger us with the number of quarterings they bore upon their escutcheons; and they appraised others by a like estimate.
Perhaps it would all have happened as it did, even if Luis Cervallos and I had not sat in the box that day at the bull-ring in Quito. But this I know: we DID sit in the box that day. And I shall tell you what happened. The four of us were in the one box, guests of Luis Cervallos. I was next to the Presidente's box. On the other side was the box of General Jose Eliceo Salazar.
This son of genius was born at Wolverley, in the county of Worcester, in 1706; heir to a paternal estate of 60l. per annum, which, fifty years after, while in his own possession, had increased to 90l. He was trained to no occupation; but, in 1726, became a writing-matter in Birmingham. In 1737, he taught school in the Bull-ring, and is said to have written an excellent hand.
His mother came down, dishevelled like a Magdalen, to tell me all about it, and I, thinking that as his father was dead I ought to act in his place, I watched for our gentleman as he returned tricked out smartly from the bull-ring, and I thrashed him up the tower staircase to his rooms with the same wooden staff that I use in the Cathedral, and he can tell you if I have not a heavy hand when I am angry.
This very worthy institution presents an imposing appearance, with its lofty dome and pillared portico facing the broad, tree-lined avenue which leads up to its spacious doors. There is a bull-ring and two theatres here. The favorite promenade is the paseo, which runs for over a mile within the city proper, terminating at the alameda.
I merely come forward as an impressionist, and I write purposely the impression of my first Mensur, because I believe that first impressions are more true and useful than opinions blunted by intercourse, or shaped by influence. A Frenchman or a Spaniard will seek to persuade you that the bull-ring is an institution got up chiefly for the benefit of the bull.
Leyburn itself is a cheerful little town, with a modern church and a very wide main street which forms a most extensive market-place. There is a bull-ring still visible in the great open space, but beyond this and the view from the Shawl Leyburn has few attractions, except its position as a centre or a starting-place from which to explore the romantic neighbourhood.
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