A really good bull-fight costs from £1,500 to £2,000 and more. Good bulls are worth between £30 and £50 apiece if full-grown and from the best flocks. The cattle are perfectly wild during their lifetime, and are allowed to run at large among the plains and marshes as they please.
The horses, poor beasts, are worn-out carriage-hacks, and cost about £2 apiece.
Without question bull-fighting is a truly loathsome sport, and the British traveller whose curiosity leads him to witness a performance is rarely tempted to repeat the experiment.
THE DESCENT OF REGINALD HAMPTON.
By Halliwell Sutcliffe.
Illustrated by W. Rainey, R.I.
Reginald Hampton, the distinguished aeronaut, was at the mercy of any wind that chose to do him an ill turn. He had entirely lost control of his balloon—of which he was the only occupant—and, so far as he could see, the odds were fairly even as to whether he would find a watery grave in the English Channel, or a rocky one on the Kentish mainland. First came a kind of gentlemen-at-large breeze, which took him seawards; then a rival gust drove him back; finally the balloon stopped for a couple of minutes to think out the situation. Reginald Hampton, being by nature a fatalist and by training an aeronaut, awaited the decision without any appearance of impatience or anxiety; when his vehicle was ready to move on, he would try to fall on his feet if possible, but not for the world would he wish to hasten the departure.
