the ridge. Finally the barometer slipped up to five 174 thousand two hundred and fifty feet in front of a tree standing on a sudden rise in the trail. The tree was blazed with much ceremony and portions of its bark, which is of an unusual reddish color, preserved for future emolument. An accurate description of these lofty places, whose nature is at such variation from the common tropical appearance of the sea level country, is difficult. Because Bougainville is a tropical island with a coast temperature always uncomfortable and sometimes almost unbearable it seems incredible to experience on the same island the climate of Cape Cod on a cool autumn's day. From forty-five hundred feet up the tree and plant life, because it is continually enshrouded in fog, has all the clinging mossy coverings of marine flora. This point appears to be the dividing line between high al- titude and low altitude on the island. Going higher than this all the forest becomes dank and dripping, pools of water and mud appear upon the trail, and the whole aspect of nature changes as completely as if one were entering upon another world. Although most of the terrain bordering the trail declines in a precipitous slope there are ravines and gulches which with their impenetrable plant growth, their fallen and decaying trees, their fog, and their great quiescence, resemble the nightmare haunts of some demon. In this region one's voice takes on an hushed and almost useless tone and the voices of others seem as strange and as unearthly as