Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/92

 present, he was quite taken by surprise, and grinned with satisfaction. We now descended a water-course running into Coohalli creek, which we traced down to the long narrow salt-water lagoon, into which it empties itself. Some beautiful pine grew to a large size in the narrow brushes bordering on this lagoon, and in some parts the young fine saplings formed an underwood to the larger timber, giving quite a novel appearance to the landscape. We now crossed the brackish creek, over a huge tree of extraordinary length, which had fallen across it. Between Coohalli creek and the Nambucca, the country that we passed over, consisted of undulating grassy forest land, heavily wooded by iron bark, stringy bark, black-butt, and casuarinæ, and intersected by many deep salt creeks, which we waded through, or sometimes got over by means of fallen trees. The soil was of an inferior description, being overgrown by many Xanthorrheæ.

When we arrived on the banks of the Nambucca, within half a mile of the bar, we could not find any trees from which we could procure, a sheet of bark sufficiently compact to make a native canoe; for the weather having been very dry, and not being the proper season for stripping bark easily, we could get none without breaking it. Our only plan therefore of crossing the river here, was to swim it, which we could easily do, as it was not more than half a mile wide. Unfortunately one of my men, Matthew Boot, was unable to swim. I therefore