Basseterre
Has a very beautiful formal square with a church off the
main axis. On the one side the rubustly classical house of a wealthy slave
trader and diagonally opposite his grim market hall, its grimness disguised by
the friendly nature of wood. Underneath the square are tunnels connecting the
two houses to lead the newly arrived slaves from the stone house on the coast
to the other. Not out of shame for the trade and a wish to disguise it, but
rather out of an aestehtic sensibility to the square, to preserve its standing
as a square for the best. To keep it free from the tainting presence of visible
commerce and the distressing sight of what made that wealth possible. St. Kitts shows us perhaps the most extraordinary system,
where slaves would arrive in the cellars of the slave traders house, the only
house in the neighbourhood built of fine stone in the most correct classical
order, be transported across the
charming square, underground in a specially designed tunnel so as not to
disturb the beauty of the place above, and then sold off in a large wooden
building. The social geometry dictates that the slave trader lives in
the best part of town. His aesthetic sensibility determines an absurd geometry
for his trade.