Antigua and the Antiguans, Volume 2 (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 2 (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
At the principal market, which is held upon a Saturday, (the
Sunday markets having been abolished, by orders of the
legislature, in 1831,) all kinds of articles may be met with.
Beef, mutton, pork, and goat’s flesh; live pigs, sheep, goats,
and lambs; ducks, fowls, turkeys, geese, and guinea-birds;
potatoes, yams, eddoes, peas, &c.; and fruits of every
description, including the luscious pine-apple, the cooling
melon, the fragrant guava, and the delicious “jelly cocoa-nut.”
The market is also plentifully supplied with varieties of fish;
some of which are very delicious fare. Besides these enumerated
articles, hot soups, boiled horse-beans, boiled peas, and Indian
corn, “fungy and pepperpot,” (a standing Creole dish,) “fried
fish and dumplings,” souse, pigs’ heads, and black puddings, with
all kinds of cakes, bread, “drink,” spruce-beer, Dyer drink,
(made from a peculiar bark,) and different varieties of
sugar-cakes, are exhibited, to allure the eye, and charm the
taste of the sable beauties who attend this mart. Many other
wares are also sold in this place of bustle, which, according to
the Antigua black bellman, would be “to _tedus_ to _’numerate_.”
It was formerly the custom to ring a market-bell at six in the
morning, and the same hour in the evening, and also to have a
clerk of the market, whose duty it was to see that the street
where the market is held was properly swept, and that the people
dispersed upon the ringing of the bell. For his services he
received the sum of 200l. currency per annum; but the legislature
at last thought it a waste of the public money, and within these
few years the office has been disannulled. There is no
markethouse at present, the principal market being held in a long
street running from the court-house to one of the gates of the
churchyard. It was under consideration of the house of assembly,
some time ago, to erect a covered market, but the proposition was
overruled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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