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Updated: June 23, 2025
Gambling is, indeed, the raison d'être of cockfighting in Moroland, for, as the birds are armed with four-inch spurs of razor sharpness, and as one or both birds are usually killed within a few minutes after they are tossed into the pit, very little sport attaches to the contest.
If no longer prizefighting was to be had, at least there were boxing competitions, so called, in dingy back parlours out Whitechapel way. Though cockfighting was a lost sport, were there not damp cellars near the river where for twopence a gentleman might back mongrel terriers to kill rats against time, and feel himself indeed a sportsman?
He could, like the young Charles James Fox, become a scholar, but like Fox, who knew some of the virtues and all the supposed gentlemanly vices, he might dissipate his energies in hunting, gambling, and cockfighting.
Every now and then, a dirty scoundrel in a shabby leather jacket would walk round the ring with a handful of gold, offering the odds ten to five, ten to seven, ten to nine, or whatever they might be, in gold ounces, which coins are worth above three pounds apiece. Cockfighting is such a passion here that we thought it as well to see it for once.
Cockfighting, which is as popular throughout the Philippines as baseball is in the United States, finds its most enthusiastic devotees among the Moros, every community in the Sulu islands having its cockpit and its fighting birds, on whose prowess the natives gamble with reckless abandon.
Nathorst, of Cervantes, has told me of a dance in Lepanto, believed by him to be a funeral dance, in which men stand abreast in a long line with arms on each other's shoulders. In this position they drone and sway and occasionally paw the air with one foot. There is little movement, and what there is is sluggish and lifeless. Games Cockfighting is the Philippine sport.
So the whole party went into the shop, and the shopman's eyes nearly came out of his head when, having given Anthea the largest paper-bag he could find, he saw her hold it open, and the Psammead carefully creep into it. 'Well! he said, 'if that there don't beat cockfighting! But p'raps you've met the brute afore. 'Yes, said Cyril affably, 'he's an old friend of ours.
There were gambling houses of ill repute, an open court for cockfighting, and other pastimes. The few gringos who were there looked, for the most part, like outlaws and fugitives from the States. It lacked a few hours until sunset when Kid Wolf drummed into the town. The mountains were already beginning to cast long shadows, and the sounds of guitars and singing were heard in the gay streets.
Horse-racing and cockfighting are still in use in some parts of the United States, though less so than formerly. In addition to the general remarks already made, I now proceed to notice a few of the particular forms of this vice. The foregoing remarks will be applicable to each of these three modes of gambling. But in regard to cards, there seems to be something peculiarly enticing.
There is always much amusement in Monterey; and what betwixt cockfighting, racing, fandangoing, hunting, fishing, sailing, and so forth, time passes quickly away. Its salubrity is remarkable; there has never been any disease indeed sickness of any kind is unknown.
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