according to information received at the mission; a new village, Areda, has been built, about half-way between old Bowls and Joe Landing. Room enough in the resthouse for the three of us to live, for storage of all our gear and supplies, and for Bus and I to work. Had news on the radio that the scow "Kari", on which we traveled from Samurai to Bwagacia, was wrecked about ten days ago on a reef in the Egum Group and is a total loss. Crew and passengers (2 Europeans included) were all picked up by the "Nuniara" on the 13th. The Kari was bound from Woodlark Id. to Samurai. Curs was probably the last trip she completed. A vessel inadequate for the job she was doing; her native skipper seemed competent enough 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 rest house. Some cloud but no rain. Boys rigged the drying units and made a work table of sago midribs and later joined me in some botanizing west about ½ mile or so to the mouth of a small creek. Shore fringed with mangroves 20-60 ft. high: Rhizophora, Bruguiera, Avicennia, Cerapa, Heritiera, etc. but not a mangrove seen fertile. The crab-holed mud 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 mangroves; Asplenium aff. nidus also growing there in large 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 Astata climbs to the tops of the trees in the coctone. The gray soil along the coast is dry and hard. Evidence of this being the dry season. Village rich in — or infested by — pigs (mostly spotted and of fair quality) which must foul the place badly in wet weather. Only a small village of eight houses including the rest house. Our boys sleep on the ample porch of the house of the VO'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 above the sea on the frontal line of ridges. There is a gap in the mangrove fringes, a couple of hundred yards long, at Joe Landing. No sandflies or mosquitoes have attacked us so far. 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 skin any crocodiles he comes across. An average skin worth about five pounds. A little black-lip shell dived for on the reefs here. Eric pays sixpence a pound for it if of good quality. He also buys small quantities of 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 Boocker 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,