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- 43 -
May 3 - 4

These two days have been devoted to fish collecting in the small streams around the plantation. Yesterday we started over toward the hydro-electric plant on the Farmington River, but saw a promising little stream on the way, and stopped there for most of the day. Bobo and Flomo went a quarter of a mile up from the culvert and put derris root in the water; just below the culvert we stretched a net. In a few moments the stunned fish, floating on their sides, began to drift down, and for five or six hours we stayed there, with the boys picking up literally buckets full of desirable specimens. We didn't count, but Bill estimated that there were twenty different species.

I went back to the trading company about noon, and bought sardines, crackers, perrier water, pickles and jam, and we ate it by the side of the road in the broiling sun - fun but hot.

In the afternoon we went over to the hydro plant. This is under construction, and it was interesting to see how much work must be done before one can have electric power in the heart of Africa. There are falls here in the Farmington. Great stretches of forest land have been felled, a labor village and an office built, rocky cliffs blasted away with dynamite, roads for the trucks built, the river dammed and being dredged, and hundreds of black men were working with pick axes and wheelbarrows.

The engineer in charge offered to dynamite the stream for Bill, to see what fishes could be caught in that way. The first blast was put off in rather shallow water close to shore; the second far out in a deep little bay; total result: four fishes as big as sardines. "The mountain labored," says Bill, "and brought forth a mouse."

May 5 -

I went to Mass at Bill Auth's, while Bill went fishing again and cut open a couple of termite nests. One nest was deserted, and other was being raided by driver ants.

We had Jolof rice - something like nasi goreng, with fried rice, chicken, ham, bacon, tomatoes, onion, egg plant and country pepper - at Vipond's. The country chop of Libera is certainly good.

In the afternoon we went back to the stream near the rice shed where we had left Bobo and Flomo, and picked up them and their collection, taking the fish over to the rice shed to preserve them in alcohol and formalin. When the boys catch a number of large fishes - some of them are eight or ten inches long - Bill gives them enough for chop, so they are rapidly becoming very enthusiastic fishermen, and think derris root is great medicine.

Spent the evening at the Club, but there was no movie tonight - the film had not been sent up from Monrovia.