Thus does the French author quoted before paint the picture of the greatest entertainment the Cuban of that time knew. But there were others, for instance the caroussel, the circus, the magicians, and there was always the cock-pit, offering almost as much excitement as the bull-ring. Here, too, the gambling craze of the people asserted itself. For not only the prosperous man about town spent his money in betting at the cock-fight, as he did at the bull-fight. Every little town had its cock-pit and every montero or guajiro sacrificed his wages to taste the excitement of that spectacle. Surely Cuba at that century's end had already learned what the hosts of strangers needed, when after a long and tedious voyage they landed on the island. One cannot help being reminded of the impressions M. Villiet d'Arignon carried with him from his visit to Cuba as recorded in Jean Baptiste Nougaret's "Voyages interessans," when after a month's sojourn he sailed for Vera Cruz on the same vessel that took D. Juan Guemez y Horcasitas from the governorship of Cuba to the vice-regency of Mexico. Then already was gambling the favorite, and, as the island lacked such places of amusement as were established later, probably the only pastime. The Frenchman noticed also the total absence of any interest in literature, art and music, and the impossibility of finding a circle of people where he could enjoy an animated conversation on subjects outside of the commonplace and of current local gossip, made him reflect rather unfavorably upon West Indian society of that time. Such reflections must, however, be accepted with some reservation. For if the West Indian and especially the Cuban of the eighteenth century lacked interest in those things that make for culture, it must be remembered that the country in which he was living was still young, and that the people's paramount interest had of necessity to be for the things material. There has perhaps never been a colony of settlers in a foreign and primitive land that has not been so thoroughly absorbed in the task of founding a home and making a living, that all other things, for the time being, did not seem to matter. All pioneer settlers are bound for at least one or two generations to be so engrossed in rude manual labor or in plans to establish a trade, that they lose touch with the current intellectual life of their mother country and fall behind. When those most urgent duties are performed and allow them brief spells of leisure, in which they look about and try to pick up the threads they had dropped, they find that the mother country has in the meantime advanced so far beyond them that they are unable to catch up with it.