July 25th
This morning I worked busily separating our ethnological collection into two groups - one for le Roux and one for me. It was quite a task, as we have already several hundred specimens collected between here and Batavia Camp. We spent the day quietly and did not leave camp as we are not yet fully settled. This evening Stan, le Roux, Becker and I played bridge in the screen house while a fierce thunder storm raged with deluges of rain and squally gusts of wind which now and then scattered our cards high and wide (always when I had a particularly good hand). When we finally gave it up we found our four beds floating in water and thoroughly soaked, the roof having blown off our shack. We repaired the damaged roof after much splashing around in the mud and rain, wrung out our bedding as much as possible, and crawled between clammy blankets under a dripping klambu to spend the night.
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