Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/98

 with what I had previously read respecting the sterility of the soil of New Holland, and the dry, harsh, dismal appearance of its vegetation. I was therefore much struck with the luxuriance of the vegetation on the coast, as we approached Port Macquarie; dense thickets of cabbage palms and myrtle trees, extended down the gently sloping rocky declivities, even within reach of the spray, and every unwooded patch was covered with grass. I had certainly never before seen a coast so beautiful; the tints of the rocks, foliage, and verdure, were all of that warm, mellow kind which a painter would delight in studying. The lofty forest too, rising so luxuriantly close to the sea, presented a- great contrast to the stunted Banksia thickets, and desiccated scrubs, which I had seen on the sea coast in the sandstone districts round Sydney.

The river Hastings. rises at Mount Warragembi, which is one of the summits on the range which divides the basin of the Manning river from that of the MacLeay. This range branches out at Mount Warragembi, so as to form the basin of the Hastings river, which consequently does not rise in the great main chain of mountains dividing the eastern and western waters, as some authors have averred. Mr. Montgomery Martin, in his work on New South Wales, has committed a great error with regard to the Hastings river. He writes that "the river Hastings rises in a parallel of 33½&deg; south latitude, and under the meridian of 150&deg; east, having a course