own requirements had to be
painfully carried up a cliff about six hundred feet in height. On the
succeeding day they suddenly came on what at first appeared to be an
impassable barrier. The ridge which they had so pertinaciously followed,
had, for the last mile narrowed and dwindled down into a sharp
razor-backed spur, flanked with rugged and abrupt gullies on either
slope. Across this narrow way now stretched a perpendicularly-sided mass
of rock, which seemed effectually to bar their path. The removal of a few
large boulders however, revealed an aperture which, after some labour,
they widened sufficiently to allow the pack-horses to squeeze through.

Once through they began to ascend what they estimated to be the second
tier of the Mountains. Shortly after they left camp that morning they
came on a pile of stones, or cairn, evidently the work of some European,
which they attributed to Bass. They were much elated at the thought that
they had now passed beyond the limit of any previous attempt.*

*[Footnote.] This cairn was afterwards named Cayley's Repulse by Governor
Macquarie: but recent research goes to show that Cayley followed the
valley of the Grose, and was many miles to the north of where the cairn
was found. According to Flinders, Bass was not on the high ridge
traversed by Blaxland and party.

They could now look round with triumph on the panorama spread beneath
their view, and from the superior elevation which they had obtained, they
took the bearings of several noticeable landmarks that they had seen
before only from the flat country. The labour of cutting a path each day
for the horses for the next day's march had, however, still to be
continued; but the crest of the ridge was again wider, though the gullies
on each side were as steep as before. That night, in camp, the dogs were
uneasy throughout the night, and several times gave tongue and aroused
the sleepers, tired with their day's work. From what they found
afterwards, they had good reason to believe that the blacks had been
lurking around meditating an attack.

They then passed over the locality known in the present day as
Blackheath, and soon afterwards had their course diverted to the
northward by what Blaxland terms "a stone wall rising perpendicularly out
of the side of the mountain." This they tried to descend, but without
success, and so kept on along its brow. Undergrowth still delayed them,
and they still had to spend their energies in hew