"Fine work! He tried to repel boarders, and he done it, too! If yer ship's sinkin' and it's yer last gasp don't never fergit to repel boarders. Ye kin go to glory satisfied then. They ought ter named that bull Cumberland."
Bill explained the day's events:
"Ye see, the bull ain't got no chance after his ammunition is gone. He was firin' his last 3-inch guns when he got that Padillo feller. It's a case o' destroyers and gunboats fightin' an unarmored cruiser with a short supply o' ammunition. When that gives out the cruiser is bound to go. Some o' the destroyers gets put out, as Bonarillo and Padillo did, but there's no use in goin' t' sea unless ye got full magazines and ain't cut off from your supplies. Oh, yes, there's lots o' things to learn from these bullfights!"
Then Bill shifted his quid and joined the crowd going out. The bluejackets didn't care much for the sport. Some of them left after the third fight and there was a steady stream from the ring afterward. Those who remained had this one comment:
"One feller got it in the neck—got the hook, all right!"
The writer holds no brief for the defence of bull fighting, but he wishes to say that the exhibition, with the goring of horses left out, was no more disgusting than a prize fight between two bruisers. Any contest that has the letting of blood as its chief feature may be called sport if its devotees so choose. This fight was no more brutal than shooting at bears from a safe distance and was not half so cruel as wounding a deer and allowing it to drag itself away and die in suffering. The bulls were in pain from the darts and showed it from time to time, but in their rage forgot the pain after an instant or two. Giving them a thrust in the heart was no more cruel in the way of killing than it is to hang up a turkey or a chicken, cut its throat and let it bleed to death.
Death came almost in an instant to the bulls. The fighters risked their lives dozens of times. The bull had a fair show at them. Their quick movements, hairbreadth escapes, showed that nerve and rare skill were required. Compared with prize fighting where two sluggers cover themselves with blood, and when one is staggering about from exhaustion the other gives him a blow that makes him unconscious—well, the writer says unhesitatingly that he prefers the Peruvian bull fight. It all depends, you see, upon the point of view.
Only a limited party could be the guests of the Government on the Oroya Railroad trip. It was known as the official party. An unofficial party with an engine and a passenger car followed. This Oroya Railroad was started by Henry Meiggs, the defaulting partner of Ralston in California who fled to Chile, got rich and paid up his debts. In 1869 he went to Peru and started this railroad.
Peru had money to spend then. Meiggs finished the road up the mountains as far as Chicla in 1876, and then the money gave out. More than $26,000,000 had been spent going eighty-eight miles. Later the Peruvian Corporation finished the road to Oroya, on the other side of the Andes, and connections have been made with the road to the famous Cerro de Pasco mines, owned by Mr. Haggin and other American millionaires. Two other branches have been built and ultimately it is planned to extend the road to the headwaters of the Amazon in Peru, so as to give the country on the east of the Andes an outlet to the Atlantic Ocean for its products.
The highest place on the line is Galera tunnel, under Mount Meiggs. It is 15,665 feet high. The distance is 106 miles from Callao. There is not an inch of down grade in the climb. There are no less than fifty-seven tunnels. Bridges over chasms and foaming cascades and the River Rimac, whose course the road follows, are numbered by the score. For forty-seven miles it is a steady climb beside the Rimac torrent in a desolate country, with the mountains red and bare. There is no rainfall in that district.