Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/248

 fear and surprise, at the unwonted aspect of the white men, whilst others were equally remarkable for their excessive fright and astonishment; others again, such as the "Spitting tribe,"' and the "Fishing tribe," were animated by the most implacable hostility towards the party, and displayed the most boundless audacity and courage; the Spitting tribe, in particular, exhibiting a series of furious demoniacal gestures, such as have never been witnessed in any other part of Australia. These tribes also differed from each other in their mode of erecting their huts, burying their dead, &c. add Sir Thomas Mitchell even detected a considerable difference in their language.

I have remarked that the blacks between Port Macquarie and Moreton Bay, are much more circumscribed in the extent of country roamed over by each tribe, than those in the thinly wooded tracts in the western and southern parts of the colony. Thus, whereas, in the interior, Sir Thomas Mitchell found on the Murray, the identical natives that had attacked his party on the Darling, 400 miles distant, and who again displayed the peculiar ferocity for which they had been before distinguished; the tribes in the north-eastern coast districts, invariably keep within very narrow limits; the extent of country appertaining to each of them seldom exceeding one hundred and fifty square miles, and generally consisting of twelve or fifteen miles of frontage in a straight line along some river, with the adjacent