Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/82

 muster resolution enough to try one of these "cobberra;" although, when I have been engaged in the survey of salt water creeks, and felt hot and thirsty, I have often envied the extreme relish with which some accompaning [sic] black would stop and gorge himself with this moist living marrow.

We continued our course through the same brushy country; the level river brush being intersected by small inlets affected by the tide, and at length arrived at the fresh running stream, which was flowing as clear as crystal in a narrow bed of large shingles. A pretty bush, with bright crimson flowers, grew among the shingles in those parts uncovered by the water. As it had been excessively sultry, it was quite delightful to drink of the pure waters of the river. We now continued travelling through the dense brushes to the northward of the Bellengen, until four o'clock in the afternoon, when we again made the river, and stopped to take some refreshment. The timber, as is generally the case, was much finer on the banks of the river above the influence of the tide; cedar was abundant, and the swamp oak (Casuarina paludosa) attained a larger size than I had ever before seen in any part of the colony. Having made a fire, Matthew Boot once more had an opportunity of exhibiting his skill in bush cookery by broiling a pigeon which I had shot as we came along. The blacks also were provided with game, as they had killed a guana and a dew-lizard.