13th. The Kari was bound from Woodlark Is. to Samarai. Ours was probably the last trip she completed. A vessel inadequate for the job she was doing. her native skipper seemed competent but seemed to allow his crew to make decisions for him. Thursday August 16: SE wind still blowing, but here on the lee shore of the island we are sheltered and get only a cooling breeze in the resthouse. Some cloud but no rain. Boys rigged the drying units and and made a work table of sago midribs and later joined me in botanizing west about 1/2 mile or so to the mouth of a small creek. Shore fringed with mangroves 20-60 ft. high: Rhinophora, Bruguiera, Avicennia, Carapa, Neritiera, etc. but not a mangrove seem fertile The crab-boled, gray and clayey and containing much broken white quartz. Shingly gravel in creek apparently mainly shale. Entire-leaved white-flowered Acanthus forms thickets up to 2 m. high where rain forest joins the man- groves; Asplenium aff. nidus also growing in large quantities pale clumps on the muddy ground, where there was also a common tree-fern (Cyathea), and a hepatic on the ground Some unusual occurrences for a subsaline habitat. A big Entada climbs to the tops of the trees in the ocotone. The gray soil along the coast is dry and hard. Evidence of this being the dry sea- son. Village rich - or infested by- pigs (usually spotted and of fair quality) which must foul the place badly in wet weather. Only a small village of eight houses including the resthouse. Our boys sleep on the ample porch of the house of the VC's younger brother. Front row of houses built right on the water's edge among tall coconut palms. Most of the villages seen on this coast are back from the mangrove coast and 100 feet or more from the sea on the frontal line of ridges. There is a gap in the mangrove fringe, a couple of hundred yards long, at Joe Langling. No sand flies or mosquitoes have attacked us here. No traps set last night. No shooting; this to give a chance of a shot at a big crocodile said to be in the habit lately of crawling up under the houses during the night. This croc not afraid of the natives, and will not be hunted away by them. For several hours Eric (who decided to stay at anchor here to trade) and Lionel crocodile-hunted with dinghy and headlamp along the coast to a big creek about a mile to the east. They saw nothing. Tide perhaps too high, they thought. Alec shoots for their skins any croco- diles he comes across. An average skin worth about five pounds. A little black-lipped shell dived for on the reefs here. Eric pays six pence a pound for it if of good quality. He also buys small quantities os the Sudest gum. This said to be gathered mostly by the women, who pick it from the bases of the trees or the ground below the trees. There is on the gravelly beach a big new white-painted built-up canoe which I asked Bom about this evening. It was bought from Booker Island by a rich native who lives in the hills above us. (Like dim-dims, says Bom, some natives are rich and some poor). The price paid for this canoe was five pigs, 200 lbs. of sago, 20 baskets of native food, and 40 pounds in money. These people have trade with booker Island and from the Bookers they buy or exchange cooking pots for sago and baskets which the women make. There is also trade with Tossel, the red coconut parrot (and perhaps other species ) being traded for bagi (shell money). For a parrot the Sudest people can get a string of bagi worth up to about six pounds. Pigs also traded to Booker Island. Lionel shot this afternoon four blue pigeons which provided us a really excellent meal of soup, breast steak and wings and legs. Mostly the cook overdoes fresh meat. This evening I gave him the ample leftovers to eat and savour (sic), so that we may hope for a repetition of this evening's success. For some reason which I do not know and have not inquired into, the white traders, I am informed by Bom, are not interested in buying gold from the natives od the island. Gold is to be had "in plenty" says Bom. They can't sell it, so don't work the streams for it. All the traders for is copra, shell and gum. In Samarai I saw recently in the lit [illegible]