[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 hewing a passage, until on the 28th of the month, they camped on the edge of the steep descent that had lately marched beside them.  The decline was, however, not quite so abrupt, and the face no longer composed of solid rock.  They paused to overlook what lay before them and immediately below, and found the view more gratifying than they had anticipated.  What they had at first taken for sandy barren soil proved now, on nearer inspection, to be forest-land fairly covered with a good growth of grass.  The horses not having tasted fresh grass for some days, they cut a slanting trench across the sloping face of the descent in order to afford the horses some sort of foot-hold, and managed to get them down to a little feed that evening.

Next morning they were up and away early, and reached the foot of the mountain (Mount York) at 9 a.m., having had to carry the pack-loads down most of the way themselves, as it was too steep for laden horses to preserve their balance with safety.  The actual base of the mountain was reached through a gap in the rocks, some thirty feet in width.

They now found themselves on what was then termed meadow land, drained by the upper tributaries of the Warragamba; and this country presenting no serious obstacle to their further progress, they rightly concluded that they had now surmounted every difficulty.  They followed the mountain stream up for some distance and, at the furthest point they reached, ascended a high sugar-loaf hill, which surveyor Evans, who followed in their footsteps, called Mount Blaxland.  From the summit they had an extensive view all around, and Blaxland described the character of the country they saw in the following words:  “Forest and grass land, sufficient to support the stock of the colony for the next thirty years.”