Antigua and the Antiguans. Volume 1

Page 345

BRIDGETOWN.

317

tigua, 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 afteryears, they are doomed to increase the table store of some Antiguan gourmand, or, perchance, find their way to England, and tickle the palate of "thelord 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 missionhouse, 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


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