ABSTRACT
SAVANNA-LA-MAR was a poor, dusty town which served as the regional capital for the south-west of the island but which showed in its crumbling and peeling façades the material decay which characterised the whole area. The charms of its natural setting, perched on the rim of a magnificent bay and hemmed on to the coastal strip by wild and beautiful mountains, soon faded. Socially, it proved a miserable place for the young Englishman who found himself mixing with disgruntled ex-slaveowners, farmers and property-owners who cared little for the local black population but bemoaned their own fall from material grace.
