30 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



ed, all fell back, and the picadores, mounted, and 

 with their spears poised, took their places in the 

 ring. The band, perhaps in compliment to us, and 

 to remind us of home, struck up the beautiful na- 

 tional melody of "Jim Crow." A villanous-look- 

 ing fellow set off large and furiously-whizzing rock- 

 ets within a few feet of the bull ; another fired in 

 the heel the figure of the soldier on his back ; the 

 spectators shouted, the rope was slipped, and the 

 bull let loose. 



His first dash was perfectly furious. Bounding 

 forward and throwing up his hind legs, maddened 

 by the shouts of the crowd, and the whizzing and 

 explosion, fire and smoke of the engine of torture on 

 his back, he dashed blindly at every picador, re- 

 ceiving thrust after thrust with the spear, until, amid 

 the loud laughter and shouts of the spectators, the 

 powder burned out, and the poor beast, with gaping 

 wounds, and blood streaming from them, turned and 

 ran, bellowed for escape at the gate of entrance, 

 and then crawled around the wall of the ring, look- 

 ing up to the spectators, and with imploring eyes 

 seemed pleading to the mild faces of the women for 

 mercy. 



In a few minutes he was lazoed and dragged off, 

 and he had hardly disappeared when another was 

 led in, the manner of whose introduction seemed 

 more barbarous and brutal than any of the torments 

 inflicted on the former. It was by a rope two or 

 three hundred feet long, passed through the fleshy 



