rst, was placed under the
command of Lieutenant King. This was Cunningham's fifth voyage as
collector with the same commander -- a very clear proof of their
compatibility of tastes and temperament. As before, the Bathurst ran
round the east coast and resumed her work on the north-west of Australia.
While thus engaged she was found to be in a dangerous condition, and went
to Port Louis to refit. They sailed from Mauritius on the 15th of
November, and reached King George's Sound on the 24th of December. Here
Cunningham found that the garden he had been at great pains to form
during his visit in 1818 had disappeared altogether. The Bathurst stayed
some weeks on the south-west coast, and then shaped a course to Port
Jackson, where they arrived on the 25th of April, 1822. Of the botany of
these coastal surveys Cunningham published a sketch entitled A Few
General Remarks on the Vegetation of Certain Coasts of Terra Australis,
and more especially of its North-Western Shore.

5.2. PANDORA'S PASS.

Let us now turn to his record as an inland explorer of Australia.

On the 31st of March, 1823, Allan Cunningham left Bathurst with two
objects in view. One was his favourite pursuit of botany; and the other
the discovery of an available route to Oxley's Liverpool Plains, through
the range that bounded it on the south; a route which Lawson and Scott
had vainly sought for the preceding year. On reaching the vicinity of the
range, he searched in vain to the eastward for any opening that would
enable him to pierce the barrier. He then retraced his steps, and,
exploring more to the eastward, he came upon a pass through a low part of
the mountain belt which he considered practicable and easy. The valley
leading to the pass he named Hawkesbury Vale, and the pass itself
Pandora's Pass, inasmuch as, in spite of the hardships the party had been
put to, they had still hoped to find it. Here Cunningham left a parchment
document, stating that the information thereon contained was for the
first farmer "who may venture to advance as far to the northward as this
vale." The finding of the bottle which contained this scroll has never
been recorded. Bathurst was reached on their return journey, on June
27th.

In March, 1824, he botanised about the heads of the Murrumbidgee and the
Monaro and Shoalhaven Gullies, and in September of the same year, went
north by sea with Oxley to Moreton Bay, to investigate that locality and
pronounce on its suitabilit