Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/33

 native blacks, who have been supplied with liquor, yelling and screeching like demons, under the influence of alcohol. Such are a few of the accompaniments of the cedar sawyers' drinking bouts. At length, when they have drank enough to balance their account, they wend their way once more to the brushes with their rations, there to remain until the next time of settlement.

The cedar is cut in square logs, on which the cedar dealer strikes his initials with a branding hammer; the logs are then launched into the water by the aid of bullocks, and afterwards rafted down to the vessels to be conveyed to Sydney. The cedar is employed in Sydney for every purpose to which deal is generally applied; and is also used for all kinds of cabinet work, as it is of a handsome grain and colour.

Twenty-eight miles from the mouth of the MacLeay, is the small village of Kempsey, on the south bank of the river, at the termination of the northern boundary of the county of Macquarie. It consists of several good brick-built cottages, an inn, a store, and police station. Mr. Sullivan has established a very fine fruit garden here. The fruit trees, of all descriptions, have arrived sooner at maturity, and grown with greater luxuriance, than in any other garden I have seen in the colony. Not far from Kempsey is the station in which I lately possessed a share; the portion of alluvial plain that we cultivated, has now been under the plough for upwards