[Footnote.] The Warragamba.

They camped at the foot of the ridge that was to witness the last struggle between man and the Mountains.  On the first day, they did three miles and a half in a direction varying from south-west to west-north-west, and that night obtained a little grass for the horses, and some water in a rocky hole.

The heavy dews in the morning retarded any attempts at early departures, as the thick wet brush rendered it difficult to drive the horses, so that, as a rule, it was nine o’clock before they were able to strike camp.  The ridge, still favouring the direction of west and north-west, on the third day they arrived at a tract of land, hilly, but with tolerable grass on it.  Here they found traces of a former white visitant in the shape of a marked-tree line.  Two miles from this point, they met with a belt of brushwood so dense that for the first time they were forced to alter their course; but the subordinate spurs on either side ending in rocky precipices, they had to return and again confront the scrub.  In these circumstances, they made up their minds to rely upon axe and tomahawk to win a way, and so next morning fell to work cutting a passage for the horses.  The ascent was also now becoming steep and rough, and on this day some of the horses fell while struggling up with their loads.

The first day’s work gained for them five miles, but at the end of their toil they had to retrace their weary way back to the last night’s camp.  The next day they cleared the track for only two miles further ahead; so much time being wasted in walking backwards and forwards to the work.  There was no grass amongst the scrub that encompassed them, and when, on Monday, they determined to move the camp equipage forward, they packed the horses with as much cut-grass as they could put on them.  This amounted to, according to Lawson’s diary, about two hundred pounds weight for each horse, which, in addition to their ordinary loads, must have been a very weighty packload for uphill work.  However, according to Blaxland, “they stood it well.”  They obtained no water for their animals that night, and what they wanted for their 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.*