Arau All day spent in the preparation of plants collected on Mt. Elandora yesterday by my boy Soni, John Collins, and sundry natives. Soni collected well; the other material very scrappy. The party camped the night of the 17th at Obura resthouse at 5200 ft. (uncorrected) roughly south of the mountain. They left the resthouse at 6:45 yesterday morning and reached the summit at 8:30. Altitude 8500 uncorrected, probably about 8300 ft. true altitude. The most recent map of the territory has 8500 ft. as the height; the green air chart 9,300 ft. The summit about 20 x 60 ft. covered mainly with "bracken" surrounded by stunted trees 6-15 ft. On the ascent, the edge of the forest was reached at 6200 ft. John saw no conifers or beech and could not distinguish any other trees. Good tall forest up to about 8300 ft. Above bambo and ferns. See report by John. Obura is in a broad, hilly, grassy valley at what appears to be the main head of the Lamari tributary of the Purari. The people of the area are in a disturbed state over a dispute about land. Some fighting took place there recently. We had hopes of these people hunting for us -- especially Dendrolagus and Tachyglossus -- but this looks doubtful now. John spoke to the people, and to an armed constable who arrived from Kaiantu to bring the disputants in for a court case. The plant collections brought back give some sort of picture only of the top of Elandora. Xanthomyrtus would appear to be replaced by a small-leaved, white flowered genus which was abundant on Mt. Wilhelm, etc. Abundant with this were a big-leaved Eurya, a Sericolea, a Drimys with bright orange twigs, etc. No specimen of the bracken was collected, but there was material of an open ground Blechnum which looks like archboldi of the subalpine. The party reports not much moss, and the specimens show little of it. Mt. Elandora is on the edge of the Markham scarp. The rock is a weathered gray granite or rock of that group. A specimen of the rock collected by John. Tuesday, October 20. Max. 28, min. 14 C. Clear dawn, the rays of the rising sun shining through the thatch of the gable end of our house at 6 o'clock. Hot sunny day; no rain, but thunder rattling to the south about 2 o'clock. Crossed the Wanton about NW of and immediately below the plantation house, the river 340 ft. below the house. My plan was to go as high as I could on a prominent height which rises to 5500 ft. or more across the river. Lost some time in following a jacking trail made by Van's boys. The trail was supposed to ascend the mountain. Instead it climbed 90 ft. from the river to a broad terrace and followed this upstream. Eventually found a trail which led up an easy spur to a big new garden clearing at 4300-4350 ft. (corrected). A single-stem giant banana stood in this clearing, 25-30 ft. from the ground to top of the stem, the erect leaves at least 1-12 feet above that, the base of the stem exactly 2 m in measured circumference. A young shoot protruded about 6 inches above the ground. The parent tree was sterile. It looked like a giant species I saw and photo- graphed (Nat. Geographic) at our 1200 m camp above the Idenburg in 1939. Beyond the new garden clearing the trail became hard to follow in places, well defined elsewhere. Followed it to 4800 ft. and from there turned back at 11:50. Got off the trail and onto another about 200 feet down. Followed this until it turned away from the direction we wanted to go, then cut across country -- very rough going in and out of ravines -- to the proper trail. Back to camp at 2.20.