he Hawkesbury. Later in the same year, and in
the next, further efforts were made, but the investigators were beaten by
the stern and shaggy hills. Captain William Paterson, in 1793, organized
an attacking party, consisting largely of Scottish highlanders, hoping
that their native skill and resolution would find a path across the
barrier; but they proceeded by boat only, and did not go far. In the
following year quartermaster Hacking, with a party of hardy men, spent
ten days among the mountains, but no path or pass practicable for traffic
rewarded his endeavours. Sydney was shut in between the sea and this
craggy rampart. What the country on the other side was like no man knew.

In June, 1796, before the Reliance sailed for South Africa, George Bass
made his try. The task was hard, and worth attempting, two qualifications
which recommended it strongly to his mind. He collected a small party of
men upon whom he could rely for a tough struggle, took provisions for
about a fortnight, equipped himself with strong ropes with which to be
lowered down ravines, had scaling irons made for his feet, and hooks to
fasten on his hands, and set out ready to cut or climb his way over the
mountains, determined to assail their defiant fastnesses up to the limits
of possibility. It was a stiff enterprise, and Bass and his party did not
spare themselves. But the Blue Mountains were a fortress that was not to
be taken by storm. Bass's success, as Flinders wrote, "was not
commensurate to the perseverance and labour employed." After fifteen days
of effort, the baffled adventurers confessed themselves beaten, and,
their provisions being exhausted, returned to Sydney.

They had pushed research further than any previous explorers had done,
and had marked down the course of the river Grose as a practical result
of their work. But Bass now believed the mountains to be hopeless; and,
indeed, George Caley, a botanical collector employed by Sir Joseph Banks,
having seven years later made another attempt and met with repulse, did
not hesitate to tell a committee of the House of Commons, which summoned
him to appear as a witness, that the range was impassable. It seemed that
Nature had tumbled down an impenetrable bewilderment of rock, the
hillsides cracking into deep, dark crevices, and the crests of the
mountains showing behind and beyond a massed confusion of crags and
hollows, trackless and untraversable. Governor King declared himself
satisfied