Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/48

 to give the men assigned to me for my surveying party, a little repose; whilst I started with our stockman—an active intelligent fellow, on whose coolness and courage I knew I could rely, in case we encountered any hostility from the blacks—on an excursion over the mountains towards this new river, keeping inland as much as possible, as by so doing I should be better enabled to judge if it were a stream of any importance. I will here insert my journal of this excursion, written at that time, as it will serve to give some idea of the nature of the broken mountainous country north of the MacLeay river.

March 6th. 1841.—Got ready a small sack of flour, ten pounds of cooked bacon, a bag foil of tea and sugar mixed together, a stone bottle of rum, some tobacco, three hatchets, and a pair of blankets. Having arranged these articles securely on the back of the most sure-footed pack-horse I had, I started on the excursion, with Miles our stockman, both of us being mounted on strong bush horses, and well armed with carbines, pistols, and swords.

Having left our cattle station, at Yarra-Bandini, late in the day, we did not get further, before dusk, than twenty miles from it. We stopped for the night at a brushy water-course, a few miles on the other side of the main range, dividing the basin of the MacLeay river, from that of the Nambucca river, to the north of it. The country thus far was grassy forest land, thickly timbered with gigantic