Addressing the Royal Geographical Society, Stuart argues that an island the size of Ireland, once the theme of widespread speculation and now sunk in poverty, must eventually be restored to commercial and political importance, and he writes to recall British attention to it. Most of the paper is systematic description: three mountain formations with no common nucleus, the coast traced bay by bay with latitudes and soundings, rivers, the plain of the Cape, harbours including the Môle Saint-Nicolas where Columbus first landed, rainfall tables copied from Moreau de Saint-Méry's observations of the 1780s, earthquakes from 1564 to the destruction of Cap-Haïtien in 1842, geology, timber and dye-woods. Later sections cover the Indigenous inhabitants as reported by Oviedo, Las Casas and Charlevoix, the royal licence of 1517 that opened the Atlantic slave trade, failed settlement schemes, and population estimates for the two republics. The ethnographic pages carry the racial judgements of Victorian imperial writing.