Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/24

 MacLeay river from that of the Nambucca river to the north of it. Mount Yarra-Hapinni is densely wooded to the summit, with an almost impenetrable forest of gigantic trees, but its spurs towards the sea descend in beautiful verdant park-like declivities to the beach, the grass growing luxuriantly, even within reach of the salt spray of the ocean. At the south extremity of Trial bay, the granite again rises in a lofty conical grassy forest hill, to which I gave the native name of Arakoon; its gullies are enveloped in brushes of bangalo palms, cabbage palms, and gigantic ferns.

In ascending the MacLeay river, from its entrance, the first objects which meet the eye on both banks are extensive mangrove flats, with thickets of myrtle, palm, and swamp oak, which, a few miles farther on, are superseded by dense alluvial brushes, rising like gigantic green walls on both sides of the river.

I must here make a digression to attempt to convey to the English reader some idea of the very peculiar appearance of that kind of vegetation to which the colonists have assigned the unmeaning name of brush. It grows on the richest alluvial land, and consists of trees of almost endless variety, and very large dimensions, totally differing in appearance from the ordinary Eucalypti and Casuarinæ, which grow on the common open forests of Australia, for the brush trees in general possess a rich umbrageous foliage of bright shining green.