You may
succeed in showing by every convincement, that you are his natural
master and superior, and that there is every reason on earth why you
should command and direct him. "No! ---- ," says the wretch, shaking
his fist, or shrugging his shoulders; and whatever your intimate
convictions may be, the end is, that you do not.
Propitiated by that ready obedience which is safest, dear sisters, in
these contingencies, the proprietor of Halia takes her, one morning, to
see the establishment of a man of fortune in the neighborhood, where
one hundred and forty game-chickens are kept for training and fighting.
These chickens occupy two good-sized rooms, whose walls are entirely
covered with compartments, some two feet square, in each of which
resides a cock, with his little perch and drinking-vessel. They are
kept on allowance of water and of food, lest they should get beyond
fighting-weight. Their voices are uplifted all day long, and on all
moonlight nights. An old woman receives us, and conducts us to the
training-pit, pointing out on the way the heroes of various battles,
and telling us that this cock and the other have won _mucho dinero_,
"much money." Each has also its appointed value;--this cock is worth
forty dollars, this four ounces, this one six ounces,--oh, he is a
splendid fellow! No periodal and sporadic hen-fever prevails here, but
the gallo-mania is the chronic madness of the tropics.
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