Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/87

 find the skin. They then gorge themselves with blood, whilst the small punctures they make, remain painful and inflamed for several days afterwards. I have frequently, after standing at rest for a few moments in a brush, picked off a dozen leeches at a time from my legs, which they had commenced sucking; and my feet generally became covered with blood, whenever I had to survey rivers or creeks along their brushy banks.

5th day.—After breakfast we proceeded through the brush to the banks of the Odalberree. We forded this stream at the point where it becomes affected by the tide, and then travelled down its right bank towards the sea.

The country we passed over, consisted of narrow alluvial brushes, and heavily wooded forest land, well clothed with grass, and rising in a high range of hills. In keeping as near the river as possible, we passed several deep salt creeks, which were the outlets for the water-courses from the hills. As we approached the coast, bangolo palms and cabbage palms became very prevalent in the brushes, and we cut down some of them to obtain the white solid heart, which very much resembles the chesnut in taste, and is used as an article of food by the blacks. Having at length arrived at that part of the river, where we had seen the natives two days before, we crossed a tea-tree swamp covered with sedgy grass, and then followed down a narrow tongue of lightly wooded grassy forest land, between the river and