COVENT GARDEN MARKET. 379 



don, receive their supplies from Covent Garden. . There is hardly 

 any season of the year when every variety of fruit and vege 

 tables, which can be forced, is not to be found in this market ; 

 and in the proper seasons a great variety is to be found, the 

 product of natural and artificial culture, in the highest perfection. 

 The sale of dried foreign fruits is here likewise immense. Eng 

 land can scarcely be considered as a fruit country, and the high 

 prices charged for the finest fruits place them beyond the reach 

 of all but the most wealthy classes. Two shillings, or half a 

 dollar, for a single peach, and at no season are they much less 

 than half that sum, and many other fruits in proportion, render 

 them forbidden fruit to the great multitude. In quantity, Covent 

 Garden is limited compared with the city of London, which it is 

 intended to supply ; but it is high tide here on a market-day, at 

 daylight in the morning, when the wholesale market-men supply 

 the retailers, and the streams from this fountain flow into and 

 permeate every part of the city and its neighborhood. The 

 market in Farringdon Street occupies as much ground as Cov 

 ent Garden, but this embraces butchers stalls as well as fruits 

 and vegetables. 



Covent Garden presents an interesting spectacle on a great 

 market-day, at 4 o clock in the morning, when the wholesale 

 business commences, and the retailers, seeking supplies for their 

 different stalls, and the occupants of stalls in other markets, and 

 the keepers of vegetable shops in the town, and the various 

 itinerant dealers, who penetrate all the by-places and streets in 

 different parts of the town and the vicinity, come to make their 

 purchases. This occupies two or three hours ; and a busier scene 

 is hardly to be witnessed. All the smaller articles gooseberries, 

 currants, peas, beans, new potatoes, apples, &c. are brought in 

 baskets ; cabbages, lettuces, rhubarb, celery, &c., in bulk, as 1 

 have described. Peas, in Covent Garden Market, are shelled be 

 fore they are sold, and after they come out of the hands of the 

 wholesale dealer. These come frequently in sacks. It is an inter 

 esting sight to see the poor and squalid women and young girls, 

 who come to earn a few pence by shelling the peas, sitting about in 

 different squads, (and I have counted at one time as many as 

 eighty in one party,) all busily engaged in this occupation at 

 about one penny, or two cents, per quart. Raspberries and straw 

 berries are brought in small cone-shaped baskets, containing little 



