for my two men, who related to me, that after passing the range which was in front of us we would enter an immense plain, that from the height where they were on the mountain, they had caught sight of only a few hills standing here and there on this plain, and that the country in front of them had the appearance of a meadow...At daybreak I left with two men to verify myself the configuration of the ground, and to ascertain whether the passage of the Blue Mountains had really been effected.  I climbed the chain of mountains north of us.  When I had reached the middle of this height the view of a plain as vast as the eye could reach confirmed to me the report of the previous day...I discovered towards the west and at a distance which I estimated to be forty miles, a range of mountains higher than those we had passed...From where I was, I could not detect any obstacle to the passage right to the foot of those mountains...After having cut a cross of St. Andrew on a tree to indicate the terminus of my second journey, I returned by the same route I had come.”

Barallier concludes his diary by mentioning another projected expedition over the mountains from Jervis Bay.  But no record of such a journey has ever come to light.

[Illustration.  Statue of Gregory Blaxland, Lands Office, Sydney.]

[Map.  Routes of Blaxland, Wentworth, and Lawson (1813); Evans (1813); Oxley (1817, 1818, 1823); and Sturt (1828 and 1829).]

1.4.  The blue mountains:  Blaxland.

Whether Barallier succeeded or not in reaching the summit of the mountains, the verdict accepted at that date was that they had not been passed; and until the year 1813, they were regarded as impenetrable.  The narrative of the crossing of these mountains, and the chain of events that led up to the successful attempt is widely known, but only in a general way.  It is for this reason that a longer and more detailed account is given in these pages; and as the expedition was successful in opening up a way to the interior of the Continent, it is fitting that its leader and originator, Gregory Blaxland, should be classed amongst the makers of Australasia.

Blaxland was born in Kent, in 1771, and arrived in the colony in 1806, accompanied by his wife and three children.  He settled down to the congenial occupation of stockbreeding, on what was then considered to be a large scale.  Finding that his stock did not thrive so well in the immediate neighbourhood of the sea coast, and wanting more land for pasturing his increasing herds, he made anxious enquiries in all directions as to the possibility of crossing the Blue Mountains inland.  Nobody would entertain such a suggestion, the failures had been too many:  every one to whom he broached the subject declared it to be impossible, prophesying that the extension of the settlement westward would forever be obstructed by their unscalable heights.  Blaxland, however, was not intimidated by these disheartening predictions;