Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/69

 growing in the brushes, and which is of greater specific gravity than any wood I am acquainted with. This tribe was the same we had met a few days before, and to which the five blacks, whom I had just dismissed, belonged. They had apparently been performing a corroberree dance on the preceding evening, as their bodies still preserved traces of the pigments with which they adorn themselves for that occasion. Among these blacks were several old men with white beards, and one man surprised me very much, as his skin was variegated by white patches. On inquiring from my two tame blacks the cause of this, they told me he had been burnt, but in what manner I could not ascertain. On emerging from the brush, we passed the encampment of these natives, where we saw a number of women and boys, who seemed excessively alarmed at our appearance. We now travelled back along our former track, and refreshed our horses on the grassy conical hill I have previously mentioned. Whilst here we encountered the tribe to which my two blacks belonged, and who were en route, either to dance a corroberree, or else fight with the Nambucca tribe. These blacks crowded round the two natives with me, to hear the news respecting those whom we had lately seen; they were all acquaintances of mine, and spoke fluently the jargon in which the whites and blacks converse. They gave to the natives accompanying me a wooden bowl full of cobberra, a long white worm, eaten by them,