26 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



of which was a sleeping-room, and at the back of 

 that a comeder or eating-room. The floors were 

 all of hard cement. The courtyard was about thir- 

 ty feet square, with high stone walls, and a well in 

 the centre. Next, running across the lot, was a 

 kitchen, with a sleeping-room for servants, and back 

 of that another courtyard, forty feet deep, with stone 

 walls fifteen feet high ; and in order that my inquiring 

 fellow-citizens may form some idea of the com- 

 parative value of real estate in Merida and New- 

 York, I mention that the rent was four dollars per 

 month, which for three persons we did not consider 

 extravagant. We had our own travelling beds, the 

 table, washhand-basin, and chairs set up, and before 

 breakfast our house was furnished. 



In the mean time the fiesta of San Cristoval was 

 going on. Grand mass was over, and the next cer- 

 emony in order was a corrida de toros^ or bull-fight, 

 to commence at ten o'clock. 



The Plaza de Toros, or, in English, the bull-ring, 

 w^as in the square of the church of San Cristoval. 

 The enclosure or place for spectators occupied near- 

 ly the whole of the square, a strange and very ori- 

 ginal structure, which in its principles would as- 

 tonish a European architect. It was a gigantic cir- 

 cular scaffold, perhaps fifteen hundred feet in cir- 

 cumference, capable of containing four or five thou- 

 sand persons, erected and held together without the 

 use of a single nail, being made of rude poles, just as 

 they were cut in the woods, and tied together with 



