At Algesiras I saw a bull in the _Circo_ that evinced no fierceness or combative inclination. The poor brute tried to avoid his assailants, and to push back the door through which he had entered. His quietude excited the utmost indignation, and even the females joined in the cry of "Fuego!" (Fire.) Accordingly, darts were thrown at the animal, in each of which, close to the barbed point, there was a charge of gunpowder, connected in the interior of the weapon with a lighted fuse. When some of these charges exploded in his flesh, he became completely maddened, to the great gratification of the spectators, by whom, I have no doubt, the death of even a human victim occasionally, would be regarded as an exciting and interesting addition to their amusement. The attire of the mounted combatants at the bull-fights appeared to me to be far more gaudy than graceful. Their limbs, below the hips, were so thickly padded as to look as large as the upper portions of their persons; and in their encounters they did not ride rapidly forward, but merely opposed the lance to the onset of the bull. In each of eighteen collisions which I witnessed, the horse was frightfully gored and destroyed, his rider being saved by the matadores throwing their scarlet cloaks over the eyes of the bull, and plunging their swords to the hilt in his neck, so as to reach the spine. I am now tempted to quote a few lines from the first canto of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," to which I shall subjoin an observation, from which it will appear that what I saw differed vastly in one respect from the glowing description extracted from Byron's romantic production-- "Hush'd is the din of tongues--_on gallant steeds_, With milk-white crest, gold spurs, and light-poised lance, Four cavaliers prepare for venturous deeds, And lowly bending, to the lists advance; Rich are their scarfs, _their chargers featly prance_; If in the dangerous game they shine to-day, The crowd's loud shout and ladies' lovely glance, Best prize of better acts, they bear away, And all that kings or chiefs e'er gain their toils repay." Of the eighteen "gallant steeds" which I saw at the bull-fights, there was not one to which I would attach the value of five pounds. None of them essayed to "prance," and unquestionably if a horse equal to the best of them appeared on the streets of Dublin between the shafts of a hackney vehicle, his owner would incur the suspension of his license for plying a horse totally unfit for public accommodation.