ANTIGUA.
237
The church is beautifully situated on a point where the descent towards the sea commences, and commands a noble prospect of the town, the harbour, Fort James, the romantic hills of the Five Islands, and the ocean in the distance. It is the finest church, after that unrivalled one in Port of Spain, of any that I saw in the West Indies; it is not indeed quite so large as the cathedral in Bridge Town, but in architecture, arrangement, decoration and site it is much superior. There is a large sloping buryingground attached to the church, and neatly inclosed with a wall. The pillars of the principal gate on the south side are surmounted by two good statues of saints, which were primarily intended for the idolatry of Guadaloupe or Martinique, but were fortunately intercepted by a Protestant man-of-war, before they could arrive at the place of their destination. I am sorry to say the unchristian practice of excluding the corpses of slaves and colored people from the ordinary burying-grounds, and of shovelling them into unconsecrated earth in some out-of-the-way place, was to be found in Antigua during my stay there. Conceive the feelings of a respectable free-colored man, who is forced by this detestable prejudice to deposit the body of his wife or daughter, in a place and manner which he well knows every white Christian would consider to the last degree ignominious; where he himself has seen the gibbet erected and the murderer hanging!