between if and Mt. Nelson on the map. If Bio is Nelson, and it was the only peak that Chalmers climbed as Baiga asserted), that must have been where his "Cloudy Mount- ain" plants came from. Mt. Nelson rises directly opposite Susu Island, where Chalmers had his mission station. established in the 1870s. Chalmers was murdered by the Goarabari of the Delta country in, I think, 1906. Natives have a long memory for such things. Gathered 42 seeds of one of the feather palms (#28882) for the Fairchild Tropical Garden. That makes five species so collected on this trip. The natives today are catching many sardines, of which there is a school in the bay. For lunch I had a small mackerel-like fish, shorter and deeper than any mackerel I know, and very good too. Here as at Dawa Dawa we are getting all the fresh food we need. Here it is, so far, fish, sweet potatoes and bananas. There can not be any great abundance of food in this area. The village seems too big for the meager gardens I have seen under cultivation, and there has been no rain for 1½ months. Friday Dec. 14: The drought and the southeaster continue. Bleak rain cloude and thund- er over Gubu Sari again about mid-afternoon. Slept badly last night, and feeling pretty seedy this morning, I stayed in camp asent the boys out to collect. They went up the waterplace gully, collecting only six numbers. Most interesting is an orchid with green, ??? 3 unopehed flowers curiously laterally flattened in the bud. Have not seen the genus before, that I recall. Saturday Dec. 15: Hot and dry although there was a light shower from a thunderstorm which built up over Gubu Sari AGAINST THE WIND DURING THE MORNING. Spent 10 hours on an excursion up the Gara River by canoe. Has Raige with me. Follow- ed the river what must have been a good 8 miles to where it bdcme generally shallow and partly choked with drift trees from the eroding banks. Still tidal to that point, thou- though the water fresh for the last mile or so. The lower reaches of the river carry very tall mangrove forest of good timber volume. A small leaved Bruguiera is the prin- cipal tree. Trees must have been at least 100 feet high. The trunks startlingly straight, and the larger ones a good 2 feet in diameter. The finest mangrove forest I have seen anywhere. The area may not be great enough to make it attractive commercially. A mile or less from its mouth, the river divides. The eastern branch, which is appa- ently the larger, is called the Gara, the western, which heads on Gugu Sari, is the Haralma-ama (Modewe on the 4-mile map). About half way to my farthest point was a ham- let called Gara. We went through the coastal line of hills, and what appeared to be a second line. Beyond that no hills were visible. Apparently the interior flattens as it does up the Dawa Dawa river. At that rate there must be a very extensive central de- pression in this southeastern peninsula of the mainland, of which the Sagarai Valley is only a part. Finding botanizing very poor on the river (only 6 plants collected in the whole morning) I returned to Gara hamlet. High hills rise steeply there, almost from the river-bank. Ham of only three houses, two of them very small and open at the ends, the third in bad repair. Only one family was at home (the others out making sago perhaps.) A man, his rather shrivelled and lavishly toothed wife, two small girls and a smaller boy. The children were charming and not the least bit afraid of me. The man brought me a pineapple and a papaya, and later, though I had only one stick of tobacco to give him, a small bunch of bananas, some sweet potatoes and a taro. He insisted that his wife cook a pot of food for my two boys and guide. The boys could eat only half of the boiled sweet tubers mandioca, cooked under a covering of banana leaf in an earthenware native "saucepan". After lunch I botanized up the rocky gully which brings running water past the hamlet and got some interesting plants. Included were a shrub of the Turraea-like (new?) genus of which I collected a species on Normanby Island, and a soft shrub with the general