Towns > Dundee > 1822 - Dundee delineated; or, A history and description of that town, its institutions, manufactures and commerce

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Vivres of all kinds are confessedly dearer, but are to d«
had in great abundance at all times. Beef is 6d. ; a hen.
Is. 6d. ; and eggs 6d. a-dozen ; and there is a plenteous and
cheap supply of vegetables. We have, in humble imitation
of Covent Garden, our melons, cucumbers, and asparagus^
in the public street. Fish seldom exceed one penny per
pound.
The Towns annual revenue may be valued at about
JZ3000. The tonnage, anchorage, beaconage dues, See*
forming a part of it, did not amount to more than £40 or
s£50 sixty years ago, and is now let at =£1300 or b£1400
sterling.
In the necessary supply of Water from a plenteous, well
situated, and valuable fountain, there is somehow, an un=
pardonable negligence. The present cistern is inadequate
for the purpose. It is not more than seven feet square, and
two feet of depth ; and in place of an elegant and capacious
bason and structure, the appearance and entry to it would
disgrace the meanest village in Britain. More water is
there lost and spilled than would serve another town of the
same size, and our supply is very scanty. Our servants are
wanderers, and idle half the day, journeying to and fro in
quest of water, as if we belonged to a caravan in the desert.
The Burying ground is, from increasing population, too
confined for the purpose of its first appropriation. Besides, it
labours under an original evil, and which our predecessors
had surely not examined ; the ground and soil is damp and
wet, and consequently very unfit for the purpose of quick
and active putrescence.
Morality and honesty, and some other smaller matters,
seem to have made little progress in amendment these sixty
years, in despite of schools and establishments. Vice, ma-
nufactures, and population, appear to have kept a steady
jog trot together. The ancient pulpit oratory, which, from
the coldness of its composition, and its still more frigid de-
livery, if it often failed to command our attention, had the
virtue, at least, to lay us fast asleep, is in the meantime sup-
planted in fashion, by the mushroom Jield tribe of bawling
and bellowing Missionaries, The charms of novelty, the