Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/36

 frequently forms diminutive cascades over opposing rocks; this, with the magnificent trees, and beautiful flowering creepers, forming natural arches, with a glimpse of distant hills, softened and blended with the deep azure of an Australian sky, cannot fail of affording gratification to any one who can admire nature unadorned by art. The ranges of hills in the neighbourhood of Dongai Creek, are principally composed of clay-slate, and other soft slaty rocks. Granular limestone and marble frequently occur, which formation contains numerous caverns encrusted with stalactites. Some of the ranges were composed of a rock which I thought might be porphyritic trap. The limestone ranges are generally covered all over with brush, bearing a great resemblance to that on alluvial land, the trees being of large dimensions, and interwoven with creepers; turpentine, (Tristania albicans,) iron bark, (Eucalyptus resinifera,) box, and myrtle trees, being the prevailing timber.

The soft slaty ranges just mentioned, are very general in the basin of the MacLeay, especially on the south side of the river, the strata form a considerable angle with the horizon, and their edges are almost in every instance more than usually disintegrated and decomposed, forming, in consequence, a