Antigua and the Antiguans, Volume 1 (of 2): A full account of the colony and its inhabitants from the time of the Caribs to the present dayLanaghan, Mrs.
History
Antigua and the Antiguans, Volume 1 (of 2): A full account of the colony and its inhabitants from the time of the Caribs to the present day
Lanaghan, Mrs.
Antigua -- Description and travel; Antigua -- History
Falmouth Harbour is considered one of the best in Antigua, and is
capable of affording safe anchorage for ships in those times of
danger to which the West Indies are exposed. The shores of the
bay boast their silver fringe of sand, which is often selected by
the parent turtle, as a place of safety, in which to deposit her
two or three hundred eggs; and when the sun has performed the
duties of incubation, which the lethargic mother refuses to
perform, numbers of these little creatures may be seen, crawling
towards their favourite element, where they feast and fatten,
until, perhaps, in after-years, they are doomed to increase the
table store of some Antiguan _gourmand_, or, perchance, find
their way to England, and tickle the palate of “the lord mayor,
and the other city authorities” within the sound of Bow bells.
Old Road (or Carlisle Road, as it was once called) and St. Mary’s
church having been already described, in our “pilgrimage to Tom
Moore’s Spring,” it remains for me, in the next place, to mention
Bridgetown, or Willoughby Bay, as it is more frequently termed.
Here, again, I have the task of describing, what is almost _a
nondescript_, for no stranger would ever discover that it was a
town unless the fact were pointed out to him. If the man who
painted a lion was obliged to write under it, “This is a lion,” I
am sure the person who huddled the three or four houses together,
which constitutes Bridgetown, had need to have put upon a
giant-like placard, “This is a town!” unless, indeed, a rather
good-looking Methodist chapel, a small mission-house, a stone
dwelling-house, with school-room attached, and a few of my
_four-cornered_ friends, stuck in here and there, like the dots
in a landscape of some country painter, to represent _crows_, be
sufficient to merit for it that lofty title, which Dr. Johnson,
or some other lexicographer of equal renown, leads us to suppose
signifies “a large collection of houses.”
As regards the population of this _town_, (I like to give places
their proper names,) I can give but little information. With the
exception of the very kind-hearted superintendant of the Wesleyan
schools, Mr. Charles Thwaites, and his equally amiable wife,
their very pretty little boy, one or two domestics, and their
scholars of every shade, the only inhabitants I saw were flocks
of black-headed gulls, busily employed in following their
piscatory avocations; a few half-starved looking sheep, vainly
endeavouring to screen themselves from the fiery beams of the sun
beneath the leafless branches of some blighted shrubs; and three
or four long-necked, screaming birds, known in this part of the
world as gorlings, and which derive their subsistence from the
same source as their neighbours, the gulls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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