Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/249

 back country. Thus on the immediate banks of the MacLeay river alone, there are six distinct tribes; viz. the Yarra-Hapinni, and Clybucca tribe, the Calliteeni or Kempsey tribe, the Yarra-Bandini, Munga, Wabro, and Conderang tribes, besides several others near the sources of the river among the mountains. Each of them contains on an average from eighty to a hundred men and women, exclusive of children, but the whole body of a tribe is never united on the same spot, unless on some important occasion, such as to deliberate on making war with some adjacent tribe, to dance a Corroberree, perform the Cawarra ceremonies, or join in a fight. They are more generally divided into small parties of eight or ten men, with their women and children, for the greater convenience of hunting, &c. and these detached companies roam over any part of the country within the prescribed limits of the main tribe to which they belong.

I have observed that the blacks on the banks of the numerous coast-rivers, beyond Port Macquarie, are able to procure an abundance of food with little trouble. I have already described the manner in which the Nambucca river natives procure, with great ease, the Pademellas, or brush kangaroos, which are so abundant in the entangled jungles. In addition to these, flying squirrels and opossums, with flying foxes, swarm in the brushes, also a large kind of bat, of which the blacks are fonder than any other animal food; the flesh of the flying fox