Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/63

 the river, which I found to be a rapid stream, upwards of one hundred feet wide at this point, and flowing over a bed of large shingles. After breakfast, I had the horses saddled to commence ascending the river. Upon crossing a brushy creek, we got down into the bed of the river and forded it, entering a dense cedar brush on the other side.

In a straight line of ten miles, we crossed and recrossed the river no less than twelve times; this was unavoidable on account of the steep, inaccessible, forest banks, which formed tangents to the convex bends of the river on either side. Our course, therefore, lay from necessity along the alluvial land, which consisted of brush, cedar plains, and forest flats. The brush contained the finest cedar and rosewood I had ever seen; the trunks of these trees were often six feet in diameter, and ninety feet high, before they threw out a single branch. The Casuarina also grew to such an uncommon height, and its foliage assumed such an unusual form, that I thought at one time it was a species of Pine. . The small clear plains, just mentioned, were covered exclusively with coarse broad-bladed grass, growing as high as a man's middle, and having the appearance of small wheat fields; the grassy forest flats were principally wooded by that species of Eucalyptus called Forest Mahogany. I halted for the night on a grassy flat on the brink of the Bellengen. An annoying accident had happened to me this day; in crossing one of the fords, my pack-horse slipped backwards down a