Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/45

 one arm, called by the natives Nymbedia, there is a curious passage, scarcely wide enough for a boat, through which the water passes, although the creek, immediately above and below this spot, is fifty yards wide. As the cedar on the MacLeay river is now quite exhausted, the cedar sawyers have lately migrated to the brushes at the Nambucca. They were at first exposed to murderous attacks from the native tribes on its banks, who killed and wounded several sawyers; and as retaliatory expeditions were undertaken, in consequence, against the natives, (on which occasion the sawyers mustered together, armed with their guns, and swords, roughly manufactured from their pit-saws,) a great number of blacks were killed in the skirmishes which took place, and they gradually became more peaceably inclined.

About six miles north of the embouchure of the Nambucca, a small stream, called by the natives "Coohalli," (which rises in a high pyramidical forest hill, and the adjacent ranges,) filters through a sand bank to the sea. I have considered this stream worth noticing, as being the farthest point south, and consequently, the nearest point to Sydney, at which I have found the magnificent variety of pine, generally known as "the Moreton Bay pine." These trees occur here all of a sudden, in considerable numbers, and of great size and altitude, although I have never detected one single individual pine in any of the brushes of the Nambucca, MacLeay, Hastings, or Manning rivers, or indeed any where