Page:Narrative of a survey of the intertropical and western coasts of Australia, Volume 1.djvu/233

 screams of a bird which had roosted over our f:res, and which the people called the cat-bird. M,'-s. The tr/dd///a and the f,u,, before noticed, are abun,_nt on these. banks, and are all intri. cately connected with each other by climbing plants, which grow to an incredible size, and hang down in rich dusters from the s:mmlt to the mot of the tree, tending considerably to beautify the richness of the scene. The woods included every tree of the soil and allmate, excepting a white and straight stemmed auca/,jptm, which is common at Hunter's River, and there called the Flooded Gum; it is used __al_ reckoned valuable for spars, but the few spe- cimensthat I have seen of it have been very brittle and bad. Some of these trees were observed by us to be from fifty to sixty feet high, perfectly straight, and without a fork for forty feet. The next morning our boats, in company, pro- ceeded for two miles farther up; in this space we crossed four falls, the last of which, running with great rapidity, occasioned some difficulty and trouble in passing over it: a little above this fall our exploration terminated, and we stopped to examine the timber. Several cedar-trees, (ce2.rda toona) of large growth, were observed; one of which, being measured, was �ound to be ten feet in diameter at the base.