Persons who have yet to make their acquaintance with the early history of New South Wales will learn with surprise that the colony had been founded for almost a quarter of a century before the Blue Mountain barrier was crossed. For so long a period it was scarcely possible to proceed more than forty miles from Sydney in any direction. Many a despairing look must those early settlers have cast on the frowning ramparts of the range, which, leaving only a narrow margin between itself and the sea, threatened to convert the cradle of the colony into a Procrustes' bed, to which its dimensions would have to conform in the future, as they had done in the past. This sense of confinement was the harder to bear that it was met with in a land of freedom; and many a time did the caged eagle dash itself with fruitless rage against the bars of its prison. A record of the unsuccessful attempts to get beyond the main range would form a heroic chapter of our history, and one, too, of which we might well feel proud, if there is any truth in the saying that in great undertakings it is glorious even to fail. Within four months after the arrival of the "first fleet" our annals present a picture of Governor Phillip and party struggling laboriously westward to the gorges of the mountains. In 1793 Lieutenant Dawes, with Captains Trench and Paterson, put forth equally persistent, but just as unsuccessful, efforts to scale the sandstone cliffs and reach the interior. During this year, also, H. Hacking, of the _Sirius_, with two companions, penetrated twenty miles into the mountains, passing over eighteen or nineteen ridges or gullies, and returned to the settlement after an absence of seven days. Three years later George Bass, the famous, though unprofessional, navigator and discoverer of the strait which still bears his name, did all that marvels of perseverance could accomplish in the hope of forcing a passage by way of the valley of the Grose. Taking a party on whose courage he could rely, Bass had his feet armed with iron hooks that he might scale the cliffs, after the manner of a spider, and made his men lower him with ropes into the outlying chasms. But it was all in vain. After fifteen days of heroic endeavour, he returned to Sydney, bringing the cold comfort of impossibility of transit. Bass assured his fellow-colonists that a passage over the Blue Mountains did not exist, even for a person on foot. It is possible that this strong statement was disproved almost immediately after. A tradition, not too well authenticated, speaks of a convict of the name of Wilson actually crossing the mountains in 1799. With another advance we get better footing, and read of a Lieutenant Barrellier making a similar attempt, but only to add another name to the list of failures. Two years later an effort of a more promising character was made by a botanist of the name of Cayley, who pushed his way into the heart of the