The training-pit is a circular space inclosed with boards, perhaps some twelve feet in diameter. Here we find the proprietor, Don Manuel Rodriguez, with a negro assistant, up to the ears in business. Don Manuel is young, handsome, and vivacious, and with an air of good family that astonishes us. He receives us with courtesy, finds nothing unusual in the visit of a lady, but is too much engrossed with his occupation to accord us more than a passing notice. This is exactly as we could wish,--it allows us to study the Don, so to speak, _au naturel_. He is engaged at first in weighing two cocks, with a view to their subsequent fighting. Having ascertained their precise weight, which he registers in his pocket-memorandum, he proceeds to bind strips of linen around their formidable spurs, that in their training they may not injure each other with them. This being accomplished,--he all the while delivering himself with great volubility to his black second,--the two cocks are taken into the arena; one is let loose there; the negro holds the other, and knocks the free fowl about the head with it. Sufficient provocation having been given, they are allowed to go at each other in their own fashion, and their attacks and breathing-spells are not very unlike a bout of fencing. They flap, fly at each other, fly over, peck, seize by the neck, let go, rest a moment, and begin again, getting more and more excited with each round. The negro separates them, when about to draw blood. And as for Don Manuel, he goes mad over them, like an Italian _maestro_ over his favorite pupil. "_Hombre, hombre!_" he cries to the negro, "what a cock! By Heaven, what a couple! _Ave María santísima!_ did one ever see such spirit? _Santísima Trinidad!_ is there such fighting in all Matanzas?" Having got pretty well through with the calendar of the saints, he takes out his watch;--the fight has lasted long enough. One of the champions retires to take a little repose; another is brought in his place; the negro takes him, and boxes him about the ears of the remaining fowl,--brushing him above his head, and underneath, and on his back, to accustom him to every method of attack. Don Manuel informs us that the cock made use of in this way is the father of the other, and exclaims, with an air of mock compassion, _Pobre padre!_ "Poor father!" The exercise being concluded, he takes a small feather, and cleans out therewith the throat of either chicken, which proves to be full of the sand of the arena, and which he calls _porquería_, "dirt."