A drive by moonlight was now proposed, to see the streets and the masks, it being still Carnival. So the _volante_ was summoned, with its smiling, silent Roque, and the pretty daughter of the house took seat beside us. The streets around the Plaza proved quite impassable from the crowd, whose wild movements and wilder voices went nigh to scaring the well-trained horses. The little lady was accustomed, apparently, to direct every movement of her charioteer, and her orders were uttered in a voice high and sweet as a bird-call. "_Dobla al derecho, Roque! Roque, dobla al derecho_!" Why did not Roque go mad, and exclaim,--"Yes, Señorita, and to heaven itself, if you bid me so prettily!" But Roque only doubled as he was bid, and took us hither and thither, and back to the nest of his lady-bird, where we left her and the others with grateful regrets, and finally back to the Ensor House, which on this occasion seemed to us the end of all things. GAME-CHICKENS--DON RODRIGUEZ--DAY ON THE PLANTATION--DE-PARTURE. As there are prejudices in Cuba, and elsewhere, touching the appropriate sphere of woman, Halia was not taken to the cockpit, as she had demanded and expected,--not to see the chickens fight, but to see the Spaniards see it. Forgive her, ye Woman's-Righters, if on this occasion she was weak and obedient! You would have gone, no doubt,--those of you who have not husbands; but such as have must know how much easier it is to deal with the article man in his theoretical than in his real presence. You may succeed in showing by every convincement, that you are his natural master and superior, and that there is every reason on earth why you should command and direct him. "No! ---- ," says the wretch, shaking his fist, or shrugging his shoulders; and whatever your intimate convictions may be, the end is, that you do not. Propitiated by that ready obedience which is safest, dear sisters, in these contingencies, the proprietor of Halia takes her, one morning, to see the establishment of a man of fortune in the neighborhood, where one hundred and forty game-chickens are kept for training and fighting. These chickens occupy two good-sized rooms, whose walls are entirely covered with compartments, some two feet square, in each of which resides a cock, with his little perch and drinking-vessel. They are kept on allowance of water and of food, lest they should get beyond fighting-weight. Their voices are uplifted all day long, and on all moonlight nights. An old woman receives us, and conducts us to the training-pit, pointing out on the way the heroes of various battles, and telling us that this cock and the other have won _mucho dinero_, "much money." Each has also its appointed value;--this cock is worth forty dollars, this four ounces, this one six ounces,--oh, he is a splendid fellow! No periodal and sporadic hen-fever prevails here, but the gallo-mania is the chronic madness of the tropics.