L. 12, P. 4. Sun. Mar. 22. Sunday was taken up chiefly with the preparations for the next day's trip to the upper Fly. Discussion centered particularly with the materials to be taken in case for some reason our return should be delayed and we should have to spend any time up there. In the end a skeleton camping outfit and ample food was decided upon. In the evening we were invited, all nine of us, to the Woodwards', and had just dressed in our best field shirts and were in the middle of dinner when a note came addressed to Archbold. As he merely glanced at it and said there would be no answer none of us imagined it had anything to do with us. But nearly a quarter of an hour afterwards he informed us that the party was off. Instead therefore we organized a couple of tables of cards ourselves. Mon. Mar. 23. Up at Four o'clock this morning; put final touches on equipment; had breakfast; and down and on board the plane at a few minutes before six. Plane started out (at dead low tide) and three quarters of the way out to the water the wheels stuck in the mud. We waited one and a half hours for the tide to rise and float her. Meanwhile I went back for another cup of coffee. Our crew of six: Archbold Rogers, Brass, Rand, Champion and I were finally installed in the ship and we took off from the little parking place and ran her out towards the water. The tide being dead low she of course stuck in the mud and we had to wait for an hour and a half for the tide to rise enough to float her. At 7.33 then we took off. We crossed mixed forest and savanna country on the way to the lower Fly River, and beyond between the Fly and the Strickland found similar mixed country. Above the Strickland River was a mixture of woods and swampy savannas all the way to Lake Murray upon which we made a landing and looked about us. Lake Murray is 178 miles from Daru and we reached there at 9.25 a.m. We had noticed a native village as we dropped down. It was located on a rather high dry island, and presently a canoe with two men in it came paddling towards us. We were all sitting all over the plane and lying out on the wings. When the men got about a hundred yards off they stood without paddling and just looked at us. At length one picked up a bunch of white feathers and called "sambi, sambi" (friend, friend); and Champion answered the same. They came a little nearer and stopped again. This time Archbold called them and with out further hesitation they came quite near. They had next to no clothes and were very black skinned. The old man wore a black beard and had his hair done with straws in some way. They traded the white feathers for some old nuts and bolts and a bundle of arrows for some yellow bunting. When we had to go we motioned to them to go. This they did, but happening to have paddled out ahead of the ship, when we hauled up anchor and started the motor we started right after them. You should have seen them put their backs into their paddling until they saw us veer off and realized that we were not chasing them. We got away from the Lake at 10.40 and headed for the Black River about 100 miles north. Murray is very greatly indented, dotted with islands and comparatively shallow compared with its extent. We got 14 feet of water where we anchored. North of the lake the savanna ceased and we flew over continuous forest. Below us we could see numbers of great white cockatoos flying just above the tree tops disturbed by the noise of the plane. The Elevala was crossed at 11.15 and mountains could be described east of the Strickland's supposed position. To the north two foothills of the main ranges could be seen blue gray in the distance. At 11.29 we reached the Black River and turned left down stream to find its junction with the Palmer. From there we followed down to find where the Palmer joined the Fly. After looking over several long reaches of these rivers for landing places we decided to head for home. A direct course carried us east of Lake Murray and a slight notch in the landscape which we used to sight on turned out to have the Strickland flowing through it. The latter was crossed at 12.40; the Fly at 1.15 and we slipped in to Daru at 1.50 p. m. well satisfied with our first exploratory flight.