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As soon as I had taken a little refreshment, therefore, I mounted a fresh horse; and he accompanied me across a small plain, immediately in front of the camp, which was subject to overflow and covered with polygonum, having a considerable extent of reeds to its right. From the plain we entered a wood of blue-gum, in which reeds, grass, and brush formed a thick coppice.
Geoffrey looked discouraged. 'And, furthermore, I declare by the nose of the great Tam o' Shanter that I will cut down every tree in the vicinity ere you shall lounge under it, said Jack. 'Softly, my boy. Hill's blue-gum forest is not so very far away. You'll have your hands full, laughed Dr. Paul. Here Margery and Bell joined the group after a quick walk up and down the deck.
They undoubtedly empty themselves into the marshes, and are a continuation of that chain of ponds on which I left the party in Mr. Hume's charge. About a mile from Mount Harris, we passed a small dry creek, that evidently lays the country under water in the wet seasons. There was a blue-gum flat to the eastward of it, which we crossed, and then entered a brush of acacia pendula and box.
The timber adapted to ship-building purposes, extends in vast quantities down the line of coast, and is of three kinds, all varieties of the eucalyptus. The tooart in the districts of Bunbury and the Vasse, and the blue-gum which abounds at Augusta and Nornalup, are woods of large size, and remarkably hard and close-grained in texture.
The forest had become a tangled maze of low-growing shrub, dotted with giant growths of maple, spruce, and blue-gum. It was a wider, deeper hollow than any hitherto passed, and the air was warmer. It was the valley of a wide, swift-flowing river. The declivity was abrupt, and the rush of the river, too swift to succumb to the grip of winter, sounded faintly up from below.
The soil on the flats was better, and less mixed with sand than it had been, but the flats were generally covered with reeds, though certainly not wholly subject to flood at any time. The polygonum still prevailed upon them in places, and the blue-gum tree alone occupied their outskirts.
Indeed, the real reason why the bite of certain animals, and above all of a man, particularly of a "blue-gum nigger," is regarded as so dangerous is on account of the swarms of germs that breed in any remnants of food left between the teeth or in the pockets of ulcerating gums. Many a human bite is almost as dangerous as a rattlesnake's.
It was dark now, but there was still some light in the sky at the end of the blue-gum avenue, and against it, as he rode away, he discovered Bessie's tall and graceful form softly outlined upon the darkening night.
The blue-gum trees, again, were never observed to extend beyond the secondary embankments of the rivers, occupying that ground alone which was subject to flood and covered with reeds.
As soon as I had taken a little refreshment, therefore, I mounted a fresh horse; and he accompanied me across a small plain, immediately in front of the camp, which was subject to overflow and covered with polygonum, having a considerable extent of reeds to its right. From the plain we entered a wood of blue-gum, in which reeds, grass, and brush formed a thick coppice.
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