Tuesday, August 6, 1938. Leaving camp at 6.30, and still following the middle slopes of the Bele, high above the river, we came out on to the edge of the great valley of the Balim about an hour later. A white stratum of cloud lay over most of the valley at the early hour, the high enclosing mountains rising clear and dark blue above it, and the bottom of the valley gradually losing distinct- ess in the hazy gloom below. Beginning the descent along a sandy ridge carrying scrubby growth of Vaccinium and yellow and white Rhododendrons, with a greant abundance of a red orchid flowering on the ground, we were again soon on limestone and walking sticky tracks of blackish soil wet from the night rains. On these grassy slopes, practically treeless but for picturesque relic clumps of brownish Castanopsis and the pink flowering low tree Vaccinium of sparse secondary growths, appear numbers of grasses and grass associates familiar from the south coast savannahs. Descending gradually these smooth grassy ridges we swing east away from the lower Bele through a thinning population, and at the same time entered the cloud bank which we had looked down upon from the heights above. At 1900 m. the first Araucaria (like A. cunninghamii) loomed up in the mist. Soon there were many of these fine trees, the older ones shaggy with lichens, and we passed through considerable patches of primary Castanopsis on the ridges, and looked down on flat-topped secondary forests of Albizzia filling the hollows and valleys between. Though scat- tered now, a heavy population formerly occupied this part of the valley. From 1860 m. down to 1680 m. in the bottom of a small Casuarina-lined river which we forded three times in the space of one quarter of a mile, the country is a cemented red river wash containing much quartz. Travelling long disused broad pebbly roads and narrow tracks through the grass, the ground often corrugated with old garden beds, we stopped for lunch on a