p. 15 | Roseau, Dominica by PHILIP GIDDINGS

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Nov 2, 1905

Roseau, Dominica

By PHILIP GIDDINGS

In the center of the Caribbean Sea, Dominica belongs to the sisterhood of volcanic-formed islands, with its Boiling Lake in the southern part, which now and then emits sulphurous and other gases, perceptible even in town. Being but twenty miles northwest of ill-fated Martinique, we are reminded that in the midst of life, we are in death.

Communication with the different parts of the island, except by waterway, is difficult, there being but a few miles of good road to and from town, and part of it by overhanging cliffs, with ponderous rocks that look murderously down. And in a country where rain is plentiful, washing away the soil that holds these rocks, one can imagine how a stranger feels as he passes under. There have been cases where the rocks have fallen, and crushed passers-by to death.

Withal, Dominica is a beautiful island. Some of its highlands are from four thousand to over five thousand feet above the sea, dressed from top to bottom with a mantle of arboreous green that gives a pleasing softness to the aspect.

Its botanic garden, with its thick, soft, evenly mown grassy carpet, is said to be the best in the West Indies. While the hand of art is evident, yet it is subdominant to nature, who revels in her native mood and freedom, which suggest and create a longing desire for that other garden from which sin turned man. I met two young men last week, and asked, “Where are you going?” “Into the garden,” they answered. “Would you mind that we start for the garden of Eden to-day?” I asked. “But so far,” they said. “But it will be nearer to-morrow if we start to-day,” I replied. They caught my meaning, and hope to comply some time, before too late. Of the twenty-eight thousand inhabitants, twenty-four thousand are Catholics.

One mile from town I hold a night-school on the evenings I have no meetings. I find many, especially in the country places, who do not know the alphabet, and even some who read do not understand what they read. We are using the “Gospel Primer.” May God bless the efforts. The work necessarily goes hard and slow in Catholic countries; but we are of good courage.

The accompanying view represents a typical scene on the most popular street, on Sunday afternoons, where we hold open-air service. We use a red banner, on which are printed in white letters, the words “JESUS ONLY.” Thus we try, in the kindest way we know, to eliminate those dead human saviors by which this country is afflicted, and point alone to the one Mediator between God and men—the Lamb of God, who alone takes away the sins of the world.

We have started a fund for the building of a Seventh-day Adventist church here, the site of which we will describe in our next writing.

This island owes its name to the fact that it was discovered on Columbus's second voyage (1493), on a Sunday; hence, ‘Dominica,’ the Spanish Domingo, means Sunday, of the popular Sunday-Lord's day error.

We ask God's people everywhere to remember us in Sunday Island.

PHILIP GIDDINGS.