May 7th. Still a few small jobs to be done on the first godowns such as doors and cementing round the bottom of the walls. Richardson and Ramm have the roof on No. 2 godown and also the lower walls completed. I myself started replacing rotten and termite-eaten timbers in the mission house and a crew of coolies at work rebuilding the kitchen. This was our first pay-day at Hollandia and a big day for the Chinese stores. The pay-roll amounted to ?269.30 for the Papuans and ?100.43 for cooks, Makassar coolies and local Ambonese mandoers. May 8th. An empty lazy day; showery in the morning. Spent several hours fixing up the coolie pay sheets and cash account. In afternoon took a short walk to a grassy hillside just north of the town and collected three plants--Metrosideres (Xanthostema, Tristanii?) No. --, a small tree with rather large ovate leathery leaves and bright red flowers: a conspicuous clump sedge with stiff glaucous leave and pointed red nuts: and a Lindsaya?, gregarious under moist rocks and steep drop drops. Chrysopaga acicertaria has a good hold on this patch of Emperata grass- land. One of the commonest of the scattered small trees has the appearance of a small-leaved Mysten. May 9th. 13 Sentani coolies departed for their villages sometime during the week-end, leaving us with 38. These, with the original lot of 61 locals, make 99 Papuans at work today. The Hollandia timber gang continued on ramp stringers, bringing in 6 logs of 6 m. each. The Sentani gang started getting light buoyant wood with which to make a big raft to float ashore our heavy articles of cargo arriving by next boat. Mielcke rebuilding the mission kitchen and self replacing with rotten timbers in the house. Ramm and Richardson working on the No. 2 go- down, putting a 6" layer of filling on top of the original concrete floor in pre-