The Court-house is a neat wooden building, on the next lot of land to the Government-house to the southward. This building is two stories high, has a neat portico on pillars in front, and large open gallery backwards, the windows of it joiced. In the upper apartments are a large council-chamber, rooms for the juries, and a gallery for the spectators, or others having business at the courts. In the lower apartments are raised seats for the judges, a place enclosed for the lawyers and officers of the courts, jury boxes, and a bar for the prisoners. In this building all causes, civil and criminal, are tried; and all public business of the colony is there transacted by the Governor, Council, and Assembly of the island.
The public Secretary’s, Register’s, and Provost Marshal’s offices, are two low stone buildings in the yard of the Court-house, and are covered with tiles. These buildings are in no other respect remarkable, than being very badly contrived, and no ways adapted to the purposes for which they were intended; the tiles being frequently blown off in the hurricane seasons, renders them damp, and an improper place for keeping public records.
The church is a large lofty building of wood, but it is at present much out of repair. It has a neat pulpit, reading desk, and a few pews; but neither altar-piece, hangings, baptismal font, belfry, nor bell. This, the only Protestant church in the island, is built on a large lot of ground, has a good churchyard of very deep and excellent black mould; but the yard is not enclosed. Adjoining to it is a fine lot of land, which was laid out in the plan of the town, and reserved by the Commissioners, for the purpose of building thereon a public school; but it is at present appropriated to a quite different use.
The market-house has been erected since the restoration of the island to the English, and is of wood, built on pillars of stone, between which are apartments for the butchers and fishermen, and the public stocks for confinement of disorderly white people and negros; and the middle passage is for the loaded fish canoes, that they may be drawn up out of the heat of the sun while the fish is selling. The upper part of this building is divided into two apartments, one for the Clerk of the market, and the other for the use of the Town Wardens of Roseau, who hold their meetings there when they transact the public business. It is also used as a guard-room for the militia, during the three days and nights of Christmas holidays (a useless piece of ceremony, only putting people to unnecessary trouble and expence) and in times of actual need, as fire, or any danger which threatens that town.
It may not be improper here to take some notice of the market-place, and market of Roseau. The former is a large open square, nearly in the centre of the town, on the bay; it is paved, and well adapted to the purpose for which it was designed; but the market is very poorly supplied in general with butchers meat. This is partly owing to the scarcity of horned cattle, few being killed, unless they are brought from North America, which, however, has, of late years, been seldom the case, on account of the difficulties to which American vessels are subject in their trading with this island, several of them having been repeatedly refused admittance into the port with only that loading.
This has often greatly distressed the inhabitants of Dominica, who having few cattle of their own, and these few being necessary for the service of their plantations, it would have been highly imprudent to have used them for the purpose of supplying the market; as it would have impoverished their estates of those useful animals, without the least probability of getting them replaced by purchasing others: for the Americans, from having been so often refused admittance to dispose of their cargos of cattle, took so great a disgust against the inhabitants of the country, that even when they have had permission to trade thither, they have actually refused.
Nor is the market of Roseau, in general, well supplied with poultry, owing to the very blameable neglect of the generality of the planters, in not raising a sufficient quantity of feathered stock on their estates, of which they are so very capable. It is, however, well supplied with excellent fish of most kinds peculiar to the West Indies; vegetables and fruit of almost every description are to be had there, in great abundance, much cheaper and better than in most of the other islands.
Sunday is the chief market day there, as it is in all the West Indies; on this day the market is like a large fair, the negros from the plantations, within eight miles of Roseau, come thither in great numbers, each one bringing something or other to dispose of for himself, often to the amount of three or four dollars; and many of them, who bring kids, pigs, or fowls, seldom return home without fifty or sixty shillings, the produce of their articles.
The price of butchers meat is there very high, being as follows, viz.