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I speak wholly from hearsay, for I have myself only witnessed a corrida de novillos in which the bulls are never killed, and have cushions fixed on their horns and a curious fight between a bull and an elephant, who might have been described as an "old campaigner," in which there was no bloodshed, and much amusement.
But during the summer novilladas are held every Sunday, with bulls of three years old and young fighters. Long before an important corrida there is quite an excitement in the town.
The free library is not yet universal in the country, though, doubtless, in the near future it may become general. In the meantime, every imaginable shade of political opinion has its organ; even the Bull-Ring has at least two excellently illustrated newspapers: and the extra sheets, printed hastily and sold immediately after the corrida has terminated, have an enormous sale.
If the corrida de toros was ever as bad as it has been described by some, it has improved very much of late years, and most of its revolting features are eliminated. The pack of dogs, which used to be brought in when a bull was dangerous to the human fighters, has long been done away with.
Practicable horns, of a somewhat too yielding substance, branched from a front of pasteboard, and a cloth tail, apt to come off in the charge, swung from his rear. I have never seen a genuine corrida, but a lady present, who had, told me that this was conducted with all the right circumstance; and it is certain that the performers entered into their parts with the artistic gust of their race.
A rich Englishman was going to work it and perhaps not an Englishman, Quien sabe! A foreigner with much money. Oh, yes, it had begun. A party of men who had been to Sulaco with a herd of black bulls for the next corrida had reported that from the porch of the posada in Rincon, only a short league from the town, the lights on the mountain were visible, twinkling above the trees.
The well-known red cover at last had the same effect on him as the scarlet cloak on the bull in the corrida, making him stamp and roar hideously. The angry gods had demented him. Væ misero! How could such sacrilege end but badly? Braving and deriding the solemn warning of the prophet, he attempted a certain pass in the Tyrol alone, and, losing his way, caught a pleurisy which proved fatal.
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