In the second volume of Vincent Roth's Guyana memoirs, Vincent is a mature adult who is very sure of himself and bound to his adopted country. Roth's memoirs, while revealing colonial petty-minded bureaucracy, jumped-up officialdom, and incompetence, nevertheless present a picture of a country that worked, where the mail reached the remotest parts of the interior, but where the obliterating power of nature over human effort had to be constantly resisted.

From an early age, Vincent Roth kept a detailed account of his experiences, often illustrated with sketches and later by watercolors. It was from these handwritten journals that his son-in-law edited this book. The first volume covers his early years as a child abandoned to relatives in France, Scotland, and London. It also covers his reuniting at the age of 12 with his father and stepmother in Australia, his arrival in British Guyana, and the first 15 years of his work in the interior.