Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/83

 Having finished our repast, and being once more ready to proceed, I observed that the blacks began to shew many symptoms of uneasiness, talking incessantly together in a low voice, and minutely examining the ground. On my inquiring what was the matter, they at length told me, with some unwillingness, as they did not like me to see that they were afraid, that they had found the tracks of some of the mountain "black fellows," who had recently been there, and who, they maintained, were close to us. Both my Yarra-Hapinni natives, and the black from the sea coast, were considerably alarmed; as the tribe from the high mountains on the north side of the Bellengen was hostile to their respective tribes, and had come down considerably below their usual beat. Although I wished to ascend the Bellengen as high as the lowest point to which I had examined it in my former excursion, I thought it best to comply with the solicitations of the blacks, and proceed no farther up the river; especially as the Yarra-Hapinni natives told me that the much dreaded invisible tribe would "durallee," (fight us.) Besides, the country had proved perfectly useless for stations, being nothing but alluvial brush land, or heavily timbered abrupt mountains.

We therefore crossed the river, and after traversing the entangled brush, emerged on a rising range of grassy forest, which was a spur from the range dividing the Bellengen from the Odalberree. After we had ascended this spur some distance, the blacks