MATANZAS.
A hot and dusty journey of some six hours brought us to Matanzas at
high noon. Our companions were Cubans, Spaniards, Americans, and
game-chickens, that travel extensively in these parts, sometimes in
little baskets, with openings for the head and tail, sometimes in the
hands of their owners, secured only by a string fastened to one foot
and passed over the body. They seem to be objects of tender solicitude
to those who carry them; they are nursed and fondled like children, and
at intervals are visited all round by a negro, who fills his mouth with
water, and squirts it into their eyes and under their feathers. They
are curiously plucked on the back and about the tail, where only the
long tail-feathers are allowed to grow. Their tameness in the hands of
their masters is quite remarkable; they suffer themselves to be turned
and held in any direction. But when set down, at any stage of the
journey, they stamp their little feet, stretch their necks, crow, and
look about them for the other cock with most belligerent eyes. As we
have said that the negro of the North is an ideal negro, so we must say
that the game-cock of Cuba is an ideal chicken, a fowl that is too good
to be killed,--clever enough to fight for people who are too indolent
and perhaps too cowardly to fight for themselves,--in short, the
gladiator of the tropics.
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