and two large plover made frequent visits to the shore south of our anchorage. I have used the "we" of this account indiscrim- inately in this chronicle as a composite of all our experience. Most of the time I was laid up with an infected knee and could not go ashore. So on this count I would advise consulting the journal of one of my compatriots for a better account of topo- graphy inland from the plantation. On Tuesday early in the morning we shifted our anchorage to a point off the most westward of the small islands in the bay. We intended to wait for the tide to change so that we could tack out across the Bougainville Straits. Mr. Beck and Hamlin went ashore for three hours and broughtback a number of white-tailed ground pigeons, large white-headed kingfishers, and a heron. At noon with a stiff breeze blowing out of SW we made sail close on the port tack and went spinning out into the Bougainville Straits on a course for the Shortlands. We got well across the Straits before sunset, but Mr. Beck decided not to make an anchorage until the morning. The wind held full in the SW all evening, dying down about midnight. With this fine wind and with fine weather above, this passage was one of the most beautiful interludes that has come our way on the France so far. The great mountains of Bougainville bore off high in the westward; eastward was the outline of Choiseul dim in the distance; and