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This day we had better travelling, the soil becoming a strong greyish loam; the forest land open and free from scrub, the trees principally consisting of iron-bark, box, and the leguminous tree, with bi-pinnate leaves, and dark fissured bark I have before alluded to. We saw here a great many pigeons of various kinds; Mr.
His sole tool with which to attack a giant iron-bark is a miserable tomahawk, or hatchet, made of stone, but little superior to the rude Celtic flint axe-heads, that may be seen in any antiquarian's collection.
Though, when one says lack of agility, it is fair to add that only a very swiftly moving creature could have escaped the two hounds at all; and, once it reached a tree-trunk, this reptile showed simply wonderful cleverness in climbing, running up fifty feet of iron-bark trunk as quickly as it could cover the level ground, and keeping always on the far side of the tree from the dogs, its long, ugly, wedge-shaped head constantly turning from side to side, in keen, listening observation.
The man had his back to the withered iron-bark now, and, besides the long stick in his right hand, he held an open knife in his left hand, as a long, fierce bitch found to her cost when she leaped for his throat, fell short, and felt cold steel bite deep in her flank as she sank to earth.
Sometimes the train puffed between lines of grey slab fencing in which were armies of white skeleton trees that had been 'rung' for extermination, or with bleached stumps sticking up in a chaos of felled trunks, while in some there had sprung up sickly iron-bark saplings.
The house, though built entirely of wood, and on one floor, was a substantial-looking building, containing ten rooms, with a broad verandah running entirely round it. The frame-work was of rough timber, and the walls were composed of slabs, which are boards split out of the iron-bark or blue gum-tree.
The narrow-leaved tea-tree, in shrubs from five to seven feet high, and the broad-leaved tea-tree from twenty to twenty-five feet high, grew on a sandy loam, with many ant-hills between them; the little Severn tree and the glaucous Terminalia preferred the light sandy soil with small ironstone pebbles, on which the ant-hills were rare, or entirely wanting; the raspberry-jam tree crowded round water-holes, which were frequently rocky; and the bloodwood, the leguminous Iron-bark, the box, and apple-gum, formed patches of open forest.
The iron-bark and pine are unknown here. The soil on these grounds is a reddish loam, more or less sandy, and thinly covered with a coarse ironstone gravel. Much of the ironstone has a strong magnetic property so much so as to suspend a needle; and it was found a great inconvenience by Mr. Surveyor Wilson, from its action on the instruments. As the land descends, the soil becomes more sandy.
The timber of the ridges was cheifly stunted hollow iron-bark, that of the river, bloodwood, and the apple-gum, described as so good for forging purposes; there was a total absence of those tall well-grown gums, by which the course of a stream may usually be traced from a distance. So little was the river defined by the timber that it could not be distinguished at a half-a-mile away.
"By Jove!" he said, "I saw the head of a Kangaroo a moment ago behind that iron-bark. Fancy it's coming so near the house. Next time it shows, I'll get a shot at it." Both men waited for the moment when the Kangaroo should be seen again. The next instant the Kangaroo bounded out of the Bush into the open paddock.
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