n to youth of those times and of his standing.

At the age of seventeen he made his initial effort at exploration in the
country around Berrima, in company with his brother Kennedy and a black
boy. They were successful in their endeavours, and found some good
pastoral country. In the following year, encouraged by their success, the
brothers made another excursion. In 1816, a Mr. Throsby bought some of
the land that young Kennedy and Hamilton had found; and their father sent
them out with him to show him the country he had purchased. John Oxley,
too, held a farm in the Illawarra district, and the Surveyor-General, who
must have heard of Hamilton's repute for good bushmanship, engaged him to
go out with his overseer and guide the men on to the locality. Governor
Macquarie also seems to have had his attention drawn to the same
conspicuous quality, for he sent young Hume out with Meehan, a surveyor,
and Throsby to examine the country about the Shoalhaven River. On the
way, however, Throsby disagreed with Meehan about the course they should
adopt, and, taking a black boy with him, left his companions and made the
best of his way to Port Jervis. Meehan and Hume carried out the work as
originally decided on, and then forced their way up the range, which had
now seemingly been deprived of a great many of its original terrors by
the hardy pioneers of the coast. On the highlands they discovered and
named Lake George, a freshwater lake, and a smaller one which they called
Lake Bathurst, both, strange to say, seemingly isolated.

Here we may remark on the tenacity with which the Murrumbidgee River long
eluded the eye of the white man. It is scarcely probable that Meehan and
Hume, who on this occasion were within comparatively easy reach of the
head waters, could have seen a new inland river at that time without
mentioning the fact, but there is no record traceable anywhere as to the
date of its discovery, or the name of its finder. When in 1823 Captain
Currie and Major Ovens were led along its bank on to the beautiful
Maneroo country by Joseph Wild, the stream was then familiar to the early
settlers and called the Morumbidgee. Even in 1821, when Hume found the
Yass Plains, almost on its bank, he makes no special mention of the
river. From all this we may deduce the extremely probable fact that the
position of the river was shown to some stockrider by a native, who also
confided the aboriginal name, and so it gradually worked the kno