76 A NATURALIST IN THE GUIANAS 



CHAPTER V 



■Cock-fighting and its history — The training of cocks in Venezuela — The 

 cockpit — Bull-fighting — Carr^ras de Cintas — Golfo — Pare Pinto — Monte 

 de Dados — Gambling banks. 



The day after our arrival at Ciudad-Bolivar was a Sunday. 

 In Spanish-American countries Sundays and the numerous 

 feast-days of the calendar are set aside for amusement. 

 In studying a people I cannot help thinking that there is 

 as much to be learnt by observing them in their pastimes 

 as by associating with them in business, and that is why 

 if I traded with a Venezuelan on a Saturday I did not 

 hesitate to accompany him to the bull-ring, the cock- 

 pit, or a gambling-den on the Sunday. In every form of 

 sport, as in everything else connected with their lives, 

 Spanish-Americans give evidence of their excessive con- 

 servatism. If we compare English sport of to-day with 

 that of 300 years ago, we cannot fail to be struck 

 by the different view taken now of certain forms of 

 amusement and that which prevailed in the sixteenth 

 and seventeenth centuries. Who would dream in these 

 days of holding a cock-fight in public anywhere in 

 England, except he had made his mind up to stand the 

 risk of being arrested and brought before a magistrate for 

 breaking the law ? Yet it is not so long ago that kings, 

 lords, and even bishops bred and fought cocks in good 

 virtuous old England. In an old book dealing with 

 orders on the Exchequer in the reign of James I., we find 

 frequently repeated the following order : ' 16^. 13s. Ad. 



