A long straight sword was then handed to the _matador_, who, with his flag in his left hand, played with the bull for a little, evading several attacks till he got one to suit him, when, as he stepped aside from before the bull’s horns, he plunged the sword into the back of his neck. Without a moan or a struggle the bull fell dead on the instant, coming down all of a heap, in such a way that it was evident that even before he fell he was dead. I have seen cattle butchered in every sort of way, but in none was the transition from life to death so instantaneous. This was the grand feat of the day, and was thought to have been most beautifully performed. The spectators testified their delight by the most vociferous applause; the Mexican women waved their handkerchiefs, the Mexicans cheered and shouted, and threw their hats in the air, while the _matador_ walked proudly round the arena, bowing to the people amid a shower of coin which his particular admirers in their enthusiasm bestowed upon him. I one day, at some diggings a few miles from Sonora, came across a young fellow hard at work with his pick and shovel, whom I had met several times at Moquelumne Hill and other places. In the course of conversation he told me that he was tired of mining, and intended to practice his profession again; upon which I immediately set him down as either a lawyer or a doctor, there are such lots of them in the mines. I had the curiosity, however, to ask him what profession he belonged to,--“Oh,” he said, “I am a magician, a necromancer, a conjuror!” The idea of a magician being reduced to the level of an ordinary mortal, and being obliged to resort to such a matter-of-fact way of making money as digging gold out of the earth, instead of conjuring it ready coined out of other men’s pockets, appeared to me so very ridiculous that I could not help laughing at the thought of it. The magician was by no means offended, but joined in the laugh; and for the next hour or more he entertained me with an account of his professional experiences, and the many difficulties he had to encounter in practicing his profession in such a place as the mines, where complete privacy was so hard to be obtained that he was obliged to practice the most secret parts of his mysterious science in all sorts of ragged canvas houses, or else in rooms whose rickety boarded walls were equally ineffectual in excluding the prying gaze of the unwashed. He gave me a great insight into the mysteries of magic, and explained to me how he performed many of his tricks. All the old-fashioned hat-tricks, he said, were quite out of the question in California, where, as no two hats are alike, it would have been impossible to have such an immense assortment ready, from which to select a substitute for any nondescript head-piece which might be given to him to perform upon. I asked him to show me some of his sleight-of-hand tricks, but he said his hands had got so hard with