Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/75

 3rd day.—As soon as it was light I sent Wongarini Paddy to spear some fish for breakfast. He soon caught some bream, which my man, Matthew Boot, an old bushman, quite au fait in such matters, contrived to broil very tolerably on the hot ashes of the fire, flavouring these fish, in the absence of choicer condiments, with thin slices of grilled pork. This, with the usual bush fare, quart pots full of tea, damper cake, and salt bacon, constituted our breakfast. A party of cedar sawyers, who had descended from Werral creek in a boat, luckily enabled us to cross the Nambucca, without waiting for the blacks to construct a bark canoe. On landing on the north side of the Nambucca, about a mile above Scott's Island, I ordered my men to load their carbines; and having made the blacks string the tin pots round their waists, we started across a grassy tea-tree flat. After crossing two or three water-courses,, and some good grassy undulating forest land, we arrived on the sea beach, about a couple of miles north of the bar of the Nambucca. We now walked easily along the smooth sands, left bare by the tide; crunching under our feet, by thousands, the small blue crabs, which issue from their holes in countless multitudes at low water. When we had walked about six miles along the beach, we saw on the heights a large party of blacks watching us. I therefore stopped, and sent Wongarini Paddy, and Billy, to pialla, (tell the news,) to them. After a short time, they returned with one of these blacks, whom it appeared