The corrida had begun when we arrived on the ground, and the place was already thronged. There was a great choice of seats, as one side was exposed to the full blaze of the sun. Over the doors were written Palco No. 1, Palco No. 2, &c., and each box had a separate proprietor, who stood in the doorway, with a little rickety step-ladder of three or four steps, inviting customers. One of them undertook to provide for us, and for two reals apiece we were conducted to front seats. It was, if possible, hotter than at the loteria, and in the movement and confusion of passing us to our seats, the great scaffold trembled, and seemed actually swaying to and fro under its living load. The spectators were of all classes, colours, and ages, from gray heads to children asleep in their mother's arms; and next to me was a half-blooded maternal head of a family, with the key of her house in her hand, her children tacked in between the legs of her neighbours, or under their chairs. At the feet of those sitting on the front seats was a row of boys and girls, with their little heads poked through the railing; and all around hung down a variegated fringe-work of black and white legs. Opposite, and on the top of the scaffold, was a band of music, the leader of which wore a shining black mask, caricaturing a negro. A bull was in the ring, two barbed darts trimmed with blue and yellow paper were hanging from his flanks, and his neck was pierced with wounds, from which ran down streams of blood. The picadores stood aloof with bloody spears in their hands; a mounted dragoon was master of ceremonies, and there were, besides, eight or ten vaqueros, or cattle-tenders, from the neighbouring haciendas, hard riders, and brought up to deal with cattle that run wild in the woods. These were dressed in pink-coloured shirt and trousers, and wore small hats of straw platted thick, with low round crowns, and narrow brims turned up at the side. Their saddles had large leathern flaps, covering half the body of the horse, and each had a lazo, or coil of rope, in his hand, and a pair of enormous iron spurs, perhaps six inches long, and weighing two or three pounds, which, contrasted with their small horses, gave a sort of Bombastes Furioso character to their appearance. By the order of the dragoon, these vaqueros, striking their coils of rope against the large flaps of their saddles, started the bull, and, chasing him round the ring, with a few throws of the lazo caught him by the horns and dragged him to a post at one side of the ring, where, riding off with the rope, they hauled his head down to the ground close against the post. Keeping it down in that position, some of the others passed a rope twice round his body just behind the fore legs, and, securing it on the back, passed it under his tail, and returning it, crossed it with the coils around his body. Two or three men on each side then hauled upon the rope, which cut into and compressed the