A field geography of Haiti's Departement du Nord, built on survey work carried out in 1954 and on aerial photographs that Wood turned into planimetric maps for the southeastern stretch no earlier survey had covered. Soil samples were analysed in Port-au-Prince and at McMaster, and the land-use categories were designed so that each could be identified from the photographs themselves.

The exposition runs from landforms to climate to soils before it reaches land use, on the reasoning that where so much rain falls orographically, relief has to be understood first. Seven climatic types are distinguished on monthly rainfall alone, temperature varying too little to matter, and the intricate patterns of soil and population density are traced back to a complicated history of uplift, river capture and coastal deposition.

Behind the physical analysis sits a social observation: independence left a dispersed peasantry farming land no cadastral survey has ever recorded.