Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/149

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AN IMMENSE AMPHITHEATER.
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shade, fifty cents; seats in the sun, twelve and a half cents; seats in chairs, twelve and a half cents extra.

Performance begins at 4 p. m., precisely.

Rules.— It is not allowed to pay money at the inner doors, and patrons of the performance will carry their own tickets to avoid confusion and crowding at the entrance, which would create annoyance. The soldiers at the garrison of Guadalajara will pay six and a quarter cents each, and will occupy the roof.

Whenever the judge shall graciously grant the bull to the fighters, the company shall be allowed the usual gratuity in place of the animal.

All the morning, a party of matadores, picadores, and their assistants, on horseback and on foot, with a band of music at their head, were parading the streets, the clowns in grotesque costumes yelling at the top of their voices, the praises of the "gran funcion" which was to come off at the Plaza de Progresso, in the afternoon. Two of the mounted men carried a pole, on which was arranged the banderillas, or light frameworks of wire, in the form of palm-trees, Chinese lanterns, lyres, cornucopias, and other objects, each about three feet in length, covered with long, waving strips of gilt and tissue paper, which were to be attached to the bulls by sharp iron barbs to drive them to madness. At the hour announced we drove to the Plaza of Progress, and found an immense amphitheater of stone, not less than five hundred feet in diameter, open toward the sky, and provided with seats arranged in five tiers, running around the entire structure, receding toward the top, until they reached the corridor beneath which were the boxes of the aristocratic and wealthy portion of the audience. Soldiers guard every public place in Guadalajara, and we saw their bayo-