to them the greatest and most
magnificent it could ever be their good fortune to witness. The day was
perfect, as indeed are most June days in Mexico. For two hours before
the performance the principal thoroughfares leading to the Plaza Bucareli
were packed solid with a moving throne all dressed _en fete_.

In no country in the world may one see such great picturesqueness,
variety, and brilliancy of color in the costumes of the masses as then
still prevailed in Mexico. Largely of more or less pure Indian blood,
come of a race Cortez found habited in feather tunics and head-dresses
brilliant as the plumage of parrots, great lovers of flowers, three and a
half centuries of contact with civilization had not served to deprive
them of any of their fondness for bright colors. Thus with the horsemen
in the graceful _traje de chorro_--sombreros and tight fitting soft
leather jackets and trousers loaded with gold or silver ornaments, the
footmen swaggering in _serapes_ of every color of the rainbow, the women
wrapped in more delicately tinted rebosas and crowned with flowers, the
winding streets looked like strips of flower garden ambulant.

Bucareli seated twenty thousand, and when all standing-room had been
filled and the gates closed, thousands of late comers were shut out.

The level, sanded ring, the theatre of action, was surrounded by a
six-foot solid-planked barrier. Behind and above the barrier rose the
benches of the auditorium, the "bleachers" of the populace; they rose to
a height of perhaps forty or fifty feet, while above the uppermost line
of benches were the private boxes of the _elite_. Within the ring were
five heavily planked nooks of refuge, set close to the barrier, behind
which a hard pressed _toreador_ might find safety from a charging bull.
These refuges were little used, however, except by the underlings, the
_capadores_, or by capsized _picadores_; _espadas_ and _banderilleros_
disdained them. On the west of the ring was the box of the _Presidente_
of the _corrida _(in this instance, the Governor of the Federal
District); on the east the main gate of the ring through which the
_cuadrilla_ entered; on the north the gate of the bull pen.

At a bugle call from the _Presidente's_ box, the main gate swung wide and
the _cuadrilla_ entered, a band of lithe, slender, clean-shaven men, in
slippers, white stockings, knee breeches, and jackets of silk ornamented
with silver, each wearing the little queue