Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/58

 as the banks were high and steep, and composed of rotten, decomposed vegetation, in which the horses sank deeply, whilst the bed of the stream was foil of huge round masses of rock. We now crossed a low, brushy hill, and descended into the bed of a mountain torrent, which was at least thirty feet wide, and full of shingles and large boulders of rock, worn round by attrition. Our course now lay along the rapidly ascending bed of this torrent for some distance, until masses of fallen trees, choked together in one inextricable mass, forced us once more to enter the brush. We found it so dense that we were obliged to cut every yard of our way; night was coming on, and to increase our discomfort, it began to rain heavily. The brush-leeches, issuing forth from the dank rotten leaves, soon attacked the calves of our legs; at length we got into a more open brush, and finally reached the forest on the narrow spur we were ascending. Dwarf palms, and ferns, however, usurped the place of grass; it was now night, but still indispensable that we should reach a place where grass was to be had. We were, therefore, obliged to unload the pack-horse again, to attack the formidable ascent up the narrow ridge before us. The rain had now increased, and the wind sounded hollow and dismal as it swept-up the ravines on either side of us; at length, after great fatigue, we dragged ourselves and horses up to the very crest of the range, which was about two thousand feet above the level of the sea. Although the