Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/81

 the alluvial land; black-butt, myrtle, turpentine, corkwood, and mahogany in the mountain brushes.

The cedar and rosewood grew to a very great size on the banks of the Bellengen; the red cedar, (Cedrela toona) was remarkably tall and straight, for this kind of tree is in general more gnarled than the common Australian trees. One cedar, which was lying prostrate, was measured by my men, and its straight trunk was found to be eighty feet in length before it threw out a single branch. The alluvial brush was intersected by numerous brackish creeks of great depth, which we either waded through, or crossed by means of trees lying over them. When we again met the Bellengen it was still salt, but not more than 280 feet wide.

Bellengen Billy amused me very much by his curious method of diving to the bottom of the river in search of cobberra, the large white worms resembling boiled macaroni, which abound in immersed wood. He swam to the centre of the river with a tomahawk in his hand, and then breathing hard that his lungs might be collapsed, he rendered his body and tomahawk specifically heavier than water, and sank feet foremost to the bottom. After groping about there for some moments, he emerged on the river's edge, with several dead pieces of wood, which he had detached from the mud.

Although I have tasted from curiosity various kinds of snakes, lizards, guanas, grabs, and other animals, which the blacks feed upon, I never could