Evening brings no silence with it; for then the _cries_ increase. “Candles here, ladies! Candles here! hard, like stones—burn like wax, (in plain English, _soft as butter_,) two for a half-a-bit!” (2¼d. sterling.) “Here your nice crackers! (small American biscuits,) seven for a dog! Here your fine coffee! Cigars here! Cigars here! only cum see, make you buy! Here your nice cakes!— Fish! fish!! fish!!! just come out of the sea, ladies! ladies! make haste, an buy dem!”—“Sugar-cakes here! Bread here! Salt fish here! Cum an look, only cum an see!”—“Goat-meat here, ladies! Sheep-meat! Vine here! (the vine of the sweet potato, used for fattening stock.)” “Want any grass? Want any wood? Want any pies? Sweet _oranger_ here! Ripe pear, really nice!” besides a thousand other announcements, fill the air, and deafen the hearers. Talk of _London cries!_ oh! they are mere _whispers_ to the _West Indian ones!_ The “dustman’s bell,” or the “watchman’s rattle,” would, I verily believe, pass unnoticed amid their stormy tongues.
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.
