CHAPTER IX. ANTIQUITIES. PRISON. SPORTS.

We seemed to be in rather a sporting line that day, for, after our return from Tisapán, Don Juan and I went to see a cockfight. In Mexico, as in Cuba and all Spanish America, this is the favourite sport of the people. In Cuba, the principal shopkeeper in every village keeps the cockpit—the “ plaza de gallos .” The people from the whole district round about come in on Sunday to the village, with a triple object; first , to hear mass; secondly , to buy their supplies for the ensuing week; and thirdly , to spend the afternoon in cockfighting, at which amusement it is easy to win or lose two or three hundred pounds in an afternoon. The custom that the cockpit