XIII.
Cock-Fighting, the National Sport of the Philippines
Training of the Birds—Mains by Electric Light—Aristocracy Patrons of the Arena—Chinese “Book-makers”—Filipino Touts—Flower Girls—The “Pit”—The Strike of the Game Birds—The Crucial Moment—Game to the Last—Honest Sport.
The national sport of the natives of the Philippine Islands is cock-fighting. From infancy the Filipino takes to this line of sport, as a duck takes to water, and he early acquires the art of heeling and training the bird which is sooner or later to increase his wealth or perhaps send him back to the drudgery of the rice-fields, where he must eke out an existence and little by little accumulate sufficient to back another favorite chanticleer in his efforts to recover from his sorrowful state of depression, as a Filipino will bet all on his favorite game-bird.
The enthusiasm these people manifest around the pit during a main is akin to that of the Spaniards and Mexicans during a bull-fight. For weeks before a battle the bird is dieted, his claws and beak are manicured, feathers cropped, and plume trimmed. Its weight requires either increasing or diminishing, as the case may be, and it is handled with the care of the tots in a baby incubator.
Every village or barrio in the Philippines has its cockpit, the most pretentious of these being found in the villages of Caloocán and San Pedro Macati, surrounding the city of Manila. Here, in a large well-ventilated arena, can be found gathered together night after night, not only a motley crowd of peasants from the rice-fields of the interior, but the up-to-date business people of the “Escolta” and the aristocracy of the old walled city, whose gorgeous victorias before sundown roll gracefully along the Luneta, to the music of the Constabulary Band. These mains are conducted under the glare of electricity with the same success as by the light of day. Chinese, who are born gamblers,
occupy a large percentage of the space given for seating capacity; these people very methodically run a book in which odds are given on certain birds before they appear to the public gaze. They are quartered together and gamble only among themselves. There is also the house “book-maker,” who takes all bets but places no odds. The small fry, or the Filipinos whose pesos and pesetas are limited, bet among themselves, either man holding the stakes.
The pests of the American race-track known as touts and rail-birds are also in evidence here. One of these will approach you asking which is your favorite bird, invariably telling you he has a sure thing and that to bet any other way would be “mucho malo.” You bet on his advice, and he leaves you, meets another easy mark, and tells him to bet just the opposite to the way he advised you. This fellow is a sure winner, as one of the birds must win and his nightly rake-off is a stout roll.
The price of admission is una peseta, or ten cents (gold). Near the entrance to the “pit” is a bamboo stand where cigars, cigarettes,