The International Magazine, Volume 4, No. 5, December 1851Various
History
The International Magazine, Volume 4, No. 5, December 1851
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
On this the Alcalde caused the trumpets to sound and the banderilleros
came in, each carrying two stakes about a yard long and fringed with
short flags. They ran close to the animal, and plunged these stakes,
called banderillos, into the bull's shoulders. Four of these were let
fly and plunged into his flesh, and the trumpets again sounded for
the matadors to stick him with a sword. Montes undertook this bull,
and drawing a long sword, he stood before him until the bull got near
enough, when he stuck him between the shoulders. The chulos provoked
him a second time, and Montes again wounded him. The attack of the
chulos was repeated, when Montes planted his sword in the animal's
shoulder, but instantly withdrew it. Twice more the chulos came to
the attack, and on each occasion the bull's shoulder was laid open by
Montes, but at the sixth onslaught, the matador plunged his sword up
to the hilt in the mangled flesh, and the bull fell. Then entered a
man dressed like a chulo, with a dagger called a puntilla, and which
gave to its owner the designation of a puntillero, and struck it in the
neck of the prostrate animal, which immediately expired. When this was
ascertained, the mules who had formed part of the opening procession,
and had then withdrawn, reappeared, and the carcase of the bull was
tied to the swingle tree, and dragged out of the arena.
Seven other bulls were brought out in succession, and attacked in the
same manner, with a little variation in the details. The second bull
charged two picadors, and did them no damage, but in a third charge he
lamed a picador's horse, and received himself a serious gash in the
neck. At a fourth charge he ripped open a horse's bowels, and coming
on for the fifth and sixth time, threw the horse of another picador
prostrate, and when he was on the ground, dug his horns into the bowels
of the horse in a most frightful manner. I was never more forcibly
reminded of Homer's description of the wolves, who in their charge
upon the flock, seize with such fiendish fierceness #"kai enkata panta
laphyssei."#
The matador who undertook the third bull had but one eye, and,
to render the combat equal, one of the bull's eyes was blinded,
an expedient worthy of its cruel inventors. I remarked nothing
extraordinary about the baiting or slaughter of this bull, except that
one of the chulos, in flying from him, had his clothes torn off, and
narrowly escaped being gored.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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