Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/61

, that we could ride for two or three hundred yards without dismounting. Having descended from this conical summit, we climbed up a steep, narrow, razor-backed slope, flanked by precipitous, brushy gullies, and gained the crest of the main range at about four o'clock. This range, which was composed of soft micaceous talc, was covered with luxuriant grass; in fact, notwithstanding its steepness, there was so much soil on it, that just over the side I half buried the ramrod of my carbine in loose earth. This range was serrated by a chain of conical summits, the average height of which I estimated to be about two thousand five hundred feet above the level of the sea; this range divides the Bellengen river from its tributary, which we had lately crossed. We scrambled along the serrated crest of this range, for about four miles to the westward, before we found a lateral spur, by which 'We could descend without difficulty to the valley of the river. The view from the range was magnificent. At our feet was the narrow glen of the Bellengen, choked up with dark green, impervious brush, whilst immediately opposite to us, on the north side of the river, a gigantic range rose up in perpendicular buttresses, three thousand feet high, and the total altitude of the range itself could not be less (judging from analogy) than five thousand feet. Opposite the point we had attained, the outline of this high range was a level table land, but nearer the coast it became broken into an undulating