Tuesday, 16 March 1948. Len and I spent the morning in an area some distance up the river from camp, having varying collecting luch each. Van got only one specimen in his line of fifty traps and is feeling downcast about it. The afternoon is clouding up again, as it did yesterday, and it looks almost certain that we shall have rain, though the symptoms have not yet com- menced. They are the accumulation of flies around the lamps and the entry into camp of the snakes. Last night the snakes did not arrive, though the rain did. The flies made up for them though; they flowed in like a stream, bumping into the light and falling in as constant a stream to the ground until there was a large puddle of flies wriggling there, wingless from their contact with the heat of the light. The rain arrived during the late afternoon; Van and I were out, he re- turning with nothing whereas I had one good dragon fly and three leeches.. They had picked me up somewhere in the woods and refused to let go. Finally the application of a cigarette end did the trick, but they leave a huge gap in one's flesh and seem to have some venom which stops coagulation, so that one bleeds for hours after they have been removed from the flesh. The rains continued almost all night and at 6.30 P.M. Jim Cobb took a reading, apparently his job includes reading the rain fall, and at that time there had been a fall of over two inches, in less than that number of hours. Wednesday, 17 March 1948. This is something of an anniversary for me, in that I left New York to enlist for the second war on this day and left Kingston, Ontario, for overseas also on St. Patrick's Day. However, nothing much hap- pened. We went in separate directions this morning, I going down to the aborigine village, Van following his trap line, and Len following the Mossman River. Len and I joined up later in the morning, returning to camp together to find Van there and we all went down to the pool for a swim. It was my day to do the cooking and I was late getting away in the afternoon but went up to the in-take, my favorite spot. My equipment is rather sketchy, consisting of a butterfly net, a killing bottle and a club. Seeing a butterfly, I put down both bottle and club, and of course then ran across a carpet snake, I could see only the last four feet of him and, not being quite positive that he was a carpet snake, made no effort to grab him with my hands. By the time I could get my club and return, only his tail was showing and while I landed on that with force, it did not prevent him from going wherever he intended to go, down a gully below some thick bushes, apparently. I did not follow him there, still, and even now, not being sure he was only a carpet snake. He must have been about eight feet, total length. In the evening, Gil Bates, Art Taylor and Harold Lane arrived, the last being on his regular job at the power house. The balance of my rum van- ished but fortunately Len came up heeled and the party was quite successful. Van has taken Lane out back-lighting, Gill and Art have returned to Mossman, Len has gone to bed, after reading me all the news from The Cairns paper, so I might as well bring this to a close. Tomorrow will be our last full day at Mossman River Gorge as we are planning to return to Cairns on the Friday bus from Mossman. S.S. Time sends in varying reports but she should reach Cairns some time during the first half of next week. My fingers are hitting the wrong keys with such consistency that I had better close up.